Monday, August 2, 2021 at 10:04 PM• Mart van Mourik • Last update: 22:09

Wilfred Genee’s father has died of a heart attack after he believed his partner, Genee’s mother, had died in a fall from the stairs. The latter fell down the stairs and was left unconscious, leading to fatal consequences for Genee’s father. During the broadcast of The the Dutch Summer Johan Derksen kicks off with the deeply sad news from Genee’s family, and asks for understanding for his colleague’s situation.

“Normally we start a broadcast a little lightly, but we are not going to do that this time”, presenter Hélène Hendriks starts off. Derksen reacts with a very serious undertone. “There are some colleagues of ours who have made fun of Wilfred this week. Normally that is not so bad, because we sometimes ask for it and we can handle it. But Wilfred is dealing with very sad family circumstances, so it’s not so appropriate now.”

“His mother fell down the stairs and became unconscious. His father then thought that she had died, and as a result had a heart attack himself. Wilfred’s father has now passed away, so I think Wilfred should be left alone for a while,” Derksen concludes. It is unknown which colleagues the analyst is referring to exactly, although there has been a lot of work in recent days about the viewing figures records that De Oranjezomer broke since Hendriks (temporarily) took over the baton from Genee.

Since Hendriks took over the presentation of the talk show on Saturday, a viewing figure record has been booked twice in a row. On Saturday, 874,000 people watched, while on Sunday 891,000 people tuned their television to the talk show, according to the figures from Kijkonderzoek.