On uncertainty, drift and desire for freedom, and yes, sports too: 7 life questions to Wilfried de Jong

Freedom and openness are essential in Wilfried de Jong's life. Don't pin him down on one trait, because then he will get pissy. 'I am not "that boy of sport".'
That's right, De Jong is a theatre and television producer and writer, among other things. About sports, for example. His new book The man and his cycling stories is in bookstores from this week, bringing together 30 years of writing on cycling, from his first story on Paris-Roubaix to a column on the Tour in corona time. A good time to repost an earlier interview.

1. What grade do you give your appearance?

'I have a big nose, my ears are crooked, my eyes droop, I got wrinkles early on, I'm bald, I don't have full lips, my nostrils are uneven. Minus minus minus. But the crazy thing is that when I add up all those minuses, I still arrive at a plus, because it gives my face character. Therefore: a 7. I used to think I would have a hard time getting a girlfriend, even if I had a nice bunch of curls back then. I never had to rely on my looks, but on talking and joking.

In my theatre days with Waardenberg & De Jong, Martin Waardenberg and I looked like scruffy boys. After five minutes, we were already sweating. We didn't epilate anything, didn't put on any powder. On stage, you have to dare to be ugly. But in daily life I am quite vain. Since I was eighteen, I've enjoyed wearing suits. T-shirts and jeans I don't have. I love beauty and I love style. In Italy, people in their eighties put on a nice shirt before having a drink in the village square in the afternoon. That way, I also take care of myself.

Photographers often say I have a fine head to shoot. I look really good in photos sometimes. Sometimes I look like forty, other times I look like a hundred. I am good at looking at myself, at increasing old age. That's the law of inhibition: because I had wrinkles early on and shaved off my hair at thirty-five, the difference is less than for people who go bald or grey at fifty.'

2. What are you uncertain about?

'I am always insecure, because I am a perfectionist and you can never be perfect. Every day I ask myself if I'm doing it right, with everything. Can I do this? Is it good enough? I see this insecurity reflected on television: I stammer my way through, often saying "eh". But I don't mind seeing who I am. I am very ambitious. Want to have it all very nice and good. Where others think it's good enough, I think: well, let's redo it anyway. It's such a waste to do things only halfway. That's why I don't like slackers.

I can't stand it when I make mistakes. Not every journalist lies awake when his piece appears in the newspaper, but if I discover a mistake in one of my columns, it troubles me for half a day.

Where this comes from I don't know, I don't remember my parents being like this. By the way, it's not so compulsive that I lead a nasty life because of it, but it does burden my mind. Success doesn't change that - insecure people often have a hard time dealing with success, waving it away. I find it hard to be satisfied or proud of something I have achieved, because I always see where I could do better. At the same time, that is also the fire that keeps me going.'

3. What was your biggest pain?

'If I compare my life with that of countless other people, I have been spared. Growing up in a harmonious family, no traumas suffered. The worst physical pain, is that even allowed? During a try-out of a Waardenberg & De Jong show, I fell down from six metres high, in front of a full house. I shattered my wrist and broke my hip. When I tried to get up, I immediately collapsed again, like tipsy game. The tech threw the curtain down and made an announcement that there was to be a break. The people in the audience loved it, they saw an enormous stunt - those guys from Waardenberg & De Jong just jump down from six metres, too crazy. Even the ambulance with sirens blaring still made them think it was part of it.

At the moment it happened, I was thinking calculatingly: try to come down as best you can, not on your head. The real shock came later. I clearly remember my mother saying in hospital: "Oh boy, you could have been killed. Then I had to cry really hard. Not that it made me any more careful, by the way; it's not in me. If something is dangerous, but I feel good about it, I do it. Two years after the fall, we played another scene where we were hanging on a steel beam on a cable metres above the ground. Unsecured. On the road bike you go downhill seventy kilometres per hour, on those thin tyres. No way am I going to squeeze the brakes then.'

4. What trait do you value most in your loved one?

'Anneloek thinks it's fine for me to sit upstairs in my study every night for two hours playing rock-hard jazz records. Many women would find that unsociable. Bullshit, cosiness like that doesn't interest me, I just want to play records. In a relationship you do things together, but I don't think it's good if you are too close or totally fixated on each other. We give each other space to do what we like. For example, she goes horseback riding for hours with people I've never met, because that little world is nothing to me. Conversely, she doesn't go along to friends of mine she doesn't like. The first year we were dating, Anneloek left overnight for the film academy in New York. Two years ago, I was for the feature film Ventoux six weeks away from home. That's good for us, and all the more fun to be together again. That whimsical nature is our raison d'être. Anneloek is very stubborn, and so am I. It regularly pops and sputters and yawns in all directions with us. It is an energetic and passionate togetherness, for twenty-six years now.'

5. What do you long for?

'To freedom. I already have an incredibly free life, but it could be better. Of course, I realise all too well that many other people are shackled in a relationship, in their work or in terms of health - I have absolutely nothing to complain about. But the cake isn't over yet. At least, I think there is still more cake. In terms of work, for instance. I am curious to see how far my ideas reach.

In writing, I am the start of everything myself, it comes out of me and I decide everything. In the coming years, I also want to make some shows for theatre and maybe something on television, deciding how it will be.

Why freedom is so important to me? I think that although man is a companion animal, at the end of the day he is primarily a soloist who might do best with himself. You shouldn't run away from that. When you are alone, you can arrange your world so that it is more fluid and enjoyable. It goes deeper. I like being alone. Some time ago, I went to Turin for a week by myself. Then I sit there in my hotel room, eat and read a bit, walk around the city. I think it's essential to be thrown back on yourself once in a while and figure it out with yourself. When I was 18, I sat on a swivel chair for six weeks and looked outside. At nine o'clock I sat down, and when my parents came home at five o'clock I was still sitting there. Alone, looking outside and thinking. That gave me a lot. Awareness of how relatable, ugly, beautiful and weird this existence is. I learned to look. In my work, you can see that in the attention to the small.'

6. What hurts you?

'What hurts me the most is when I am not understood. When people only see a part of me and magnify it, and then say wrong things like, "You must really like that" or "That's that guy from sports". Then I lose heart. I am not "the sports guy". I have written seven books, you know. Did those people miss twelve years of Waardenberg & De Jong? Don't they know that I did four years of Social Academy and worked with runaway boys and girls, half of whom are already under the sod? Another one: "You are always very busy, aren't you? You must never be able to." Why can't I ever? You can just ask me, can't you? I can already feel the irritation again. When I tell it like that, it sounds childish, I think. Because how can I expect someone who doesn't know me to understand me? But it bothers me when people oversimplify things; I don't like being labelled. I promote freedom in conversation, freedom of thought. Asking questions instead of already having the answers ready and thinking you know how something or someone works. I have also always strived for openness and open-mindedness in my work. I don't try to find something a priori about someone already. I have a broadcast of 24 hours with... made with Richard Klinkhamer, the man who had killed his wife and had written a book about it. Committing a murder is a serious offence, but did that get rid of the man? I don't think so. During the broadcast, he turned out to be a maladjusted, sometimes nasty person, but also an inspiring and occasionally sweet man. I like to see what else is inside someone. Everyone has a story.'

7. What is your fondest childhood memory?

'In the neighbourhood where we used to live, in 110-Morgen, a neighbourhood in the fifties, we had a subscription to natural swimming pool Het Zwarte Plasje. There I got my swimming lessons from a man with one of those steel hooks in your neck, early in the morning, in the freezing cold water. You had a nature section and sunbathing areas there. When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I was lying there in the sun with my friends, in bermuda swimming trunks with those sixties-like flowers on it. Sonja and Irma, twins, were also in the pool. Through the triangular window of my arms, I lay peering. A breast, a strap along a shoulder. Those afternoons, sometimes only two hours long, seemed like a summer holiday. That's what's so beautiful about childhood: you live in the here and now, but the time ahead is limitless and long. It's all still to come - world travel, a girlfriend, a house, children, learning to drive, you can still become the best footballer of all time. Everything is still in that vista of that triangular window.

Meanwhile, that little triangular window has become a quadrangular steel shutter that you have to push hard against and from which the vistas are no longer so far. Because you have had to deal with death, and with it has come the limitation. Finiteness imposes itself. Next year, I will be sixty. I still have a lot of drive. Proof drive, work drive... That keeps me going. I am also more in a hurry. To write another book, put on another show. To go to Buenos Aires. As you get older, you inevitably have to say goodbye to things you used to be able to do. I like fighting that battle. You think: I still have quite a good figure, I can still swim quite far under water, I'm still quite pretty. But reality, of course, is more honest than such thoughts.'