Cyril Hanouna

Cyril Valéry Isaac Hanouna (French pronunciation: [siʁil valeʁi izak anuna] ; Arabic: سيريل فاليري إسحاق حنونة ; born 23 September 1974) is a French radio and television presenter, writer, author, columnist, producer, singer and occasional actor and comedian of Tunisian origin. He is best known for hosting the popular French TV show Touche pas à mon poste.

Hanouna was born into a Jewish family, the son of a general practitioner and a clothing shopkeeper who had both arrived in France from Tunis in 1969. Like his father, Hanouna first chose medical studies. Having experienced academic difficulties in high school, he decided to study management with the goal of becoming a certified accountant, but later abandoned his studies.

Hanouna made his television debut in 1999 on the TV channel Comédie+, where he composed the texts for its trailers. Hanouna became a television presenter in 2002 when he co-hosted the third series of La Grosse Émission alongside the comedy duo Kad et Olivier. In February 2002 he was approached by RTL Radio and he hosted a radio show called Planet Arthur alongside Manu Levy and Valérie Bénaïm. In 2003 he hosted the morning show Morning Live on M6.

Since 2008, Hanouna has been associated with the Eurovision Song Contest. At the 2008 contest, he presented the French tele-votes and provided the French commentary for the 2009 and 2010 contests alongside Julien Courbet and Stéphane Bern.

Currently, Hanouna is affiliated with Europe 1 TV and a host of its program Touche Pas à Mon Poste. Until 2012, it was seen on France 4 before moving with its entire production team to D8 with a 7 October launch. The channel also bought the rights for Nouvelle Star, the French version of the Pop Idol series, and Hanouna became its regular host. In 2011, he acted in the third installment of La Vérité si je mens !.

Hanouna is presently the producer of his own entertainment company, H2O Productions, where he works on some of the most popular TV shows on France's channel C8 (as D8 has been renamed). He is also active on almost all TV channels owned by Vincent Bolloré (Direct 8, Direct Star and Canal+). In 2015 Bolloré spent 250 million euros to retain Hanouna.

In 2019, and in reaction to the French yellow vests movement, Hanouna proposed a television show to be co-hosted by a French politician that would seek to address the everyday concerns of French citizens.

Cyril Hanouna has often received satirical awards from Gérards de la Télévision: Industrial Mistake Award 2007, Worst Presenter 2013 and 2014, The Presenter Who Doesn't Need Drugs 2016.[10] In February 2016, he was drawn by Charlie Hebdo as a mosquito sucking out children's brains.[11]

He is described as an annoying clown, switching from hysterical chuckles to vulgarities, and is involved in several affairs such as offering non-existent gifts,[12] ripping a book during a broadcast,[13] humiliating journalists and collaborators and making sexist and homophobic jokes.[14][15] In February 2016 two French journalists (Julien Cazarre and Arnaud Ramsay) reported that they received threats from Hanouna when they refused to appear on his show.[16] Society magazine compiled a long report about him, describing him as "tyrannical, pretentious, full of anger," managing his team with "scabrous practices", based on evidence coming from his own collaborators (who were anonymously quoted).[17] Stéphane Guillon, another Canal+ presenter, describes Hanouna as the "Kim Jong-Il of C8".[18]

In November and December 2016, the Superior Council of Audiovisual launched two administrative procedures against Touche Pas a Mon Poste because of frequent humiliations and sexist and homophobic statements during the broadcast.[19] In one segment of the show, Hanouna posted a fake gay dating profile online using a torso picture of gay model Max Emerson and mocked the men who responded to the profile while he was live on air. The segment triggered nearly 20,000 complaints to regulators and condemnation from LGBT groups.[20][21]

In December 2016, the French association of LGBT journalists counted 42 sexist and homophobic jokes, and describes him as an unapologetic promoter of homophobia.[22]