She is not yet on the garden terrace when she is already recognized. “CiaoAngela!” shouts a voice from the kitchen. At the Sicilian neighborhoodrestaurant in North Rotterdam, they don’t know her from television. Angela deJong lives nearby and has been coming here for fifteen years. Inside, thereare red checkered rugs on the table and team photos hang on the wall. Outsidewe sit under a lush pergola with grapes.
She seems slightly out of breath. Her widely read TV column for the GeneralNewspaper (‘Angela watches TV’) just finished, on the late side. She writesto him in the morning, five times a week, and then sits in front of the TV allevening.
She wants to keep up with what’s going on in ratings hits like All of HollandBakt , Farmer seeks wife or Chateau Meiland. She wants to watcheverything that is live and everything on NPO1, RTL4 and SBS6. She prefers tosee the programs at the moment they are broadcast. If that really doesn’t work– because of a parents’ evening, for example, her children are sixteen,fourteen and nine – she watches a broadcast. Streaming services like Netflixignore them. “Television is something you’ve all been watching. Even thoughpeople have turned on a series, they have also caught a talk show. After all,that is what the coffee machine is mainly about. Television will notdisappear.”
“Order?” asks the waiter. She looks at the panini. “Oh, but I see they havesalads too.” Her husband usually cooks at home, he is editor-in-chief at theAD. “Often vegetables with potatoes, rice, pasta and usually also meat. Irecently proposed to become vegetarian now and then, but the kids didn’tappreciate that.”
Linda de Mol
Five years ago, TV critic Angela de Jong made the crossing to the other sideof the screen. She won the quiz The smartest person and appeared in herelement in front of the camera. The editor-in-chief of the AD asked whethershe would like to accept the invitations from talk shows, which she alwaysdeclined, to join the conversation on television as a poster for thenewspaper. Since then she has regularly appeared on programs such as On 1 ,Jinek , Beau , good morning Netherlands , Today Inside. Quick-wittedand never shy about an opinion, often wrapped in sentences behind which youcan almost see the exclamation mark.
What turned out? She also does well at the coffee machine herself. Half of theNetherlands regularly falls over her on social media. Marcel van Roosmalenspoke at the end of last year in his NRC -column of “an oracle that justkeeps on rattling”. The satirical TV show Promenade introduced an Angela deJong gong in the summer of 2020, with a photo of her face, which was beatenwhen someone quoted something she had said. She shrugs. “How do you say that?It’s better for them to ramble on your bike than ride on your dick. ApparentlyI matter.”
Dutch celebrities whom she fillets in her columns also hit back through themedia. At the beginning of this year, Linda de Mol spoke on her website of”the sad, intensely false Angela de Jong” – after a column about the abusescandal at talent show The Voice of Holland. Angela de Jong was surprisedthat Linda had not told her brother John about two women who joined themagazine in 2020 Linda. reported accusations against coach Ali B. (the womenthemselves did not want that, according to Linda de Mol in her statement). “Somuch for the image of the ‘close’ family De Mol”, wrote Angela de Jong. „[…]Or was Linda lying when she wrote down how close they were because the fairytale sold so well to her readers?”
The waiter brings two huge deep plates full of crisp greens.
Why have lunch here?
Angela de Jong opted for lunch at La Salute:
“I’m not so fond of going out for lunch. But when we go get sandwiches, ninetimes out of ten we get them here. The sandwiches are very tasty. They arealso very nice people. And I think Italy is a fantastic holiday destination.If I eat a sandwich from here, I’m back in Italy for half an hour.”
John de Mol
As it goes with celebrities, Angela de Jong could easily have been ontelevision much more often. She did not accept invitations to participate in_The Masked Singer_ , Expedition Robinson and Comedy Central Roast. Evenan offer from John de Mol for his own late evening program, or as a co-presenter of 6Inside counterpart of show program RTL Boulevard she let go.She would earn almost three hundred thousand a year. “I have never seriouslyconsidered for one minute surrendering myself wholeheartedly to John de Mol.If it’s not a success, you’re standing House hunting present to serve yourcontract. And then it’s over with Angela de Jong.”
Television is not her world, her world is watching television on the couch.She grew up in Ouderkerk aan den IJssel (between Gouda and Rotterdam) in astrict Christian environment. At her high school, the girls wore skirts belowthe knee and homosexuality was frowned upon, but her parents weren’t so strictabout it. They read the AD instead of a Christian newspaper (“My father likessports very much”) and watched television. Although her mother stopped workingwhen Angela was born, she received the same upbringing as her two youngerbrothers. “My parents always said to all three of us: learn, learn, learn.That was the only way to make your money a little easier than my father. Wewere fine at home but that was because he often worked between sixty andeighty hours.” He was a truck driver, collecting milk from farmers andbringing it to the factory. Her mother was first a doctor’s assistant, later akindergarten teacher. Angela de Jong went to study in Utrecht (general arts,specialization in film and television studies). She did an internship at_coffee time_ , but enjoyed pieces she wrote for the door-to-door paper more,because her name was above them. She continued to live at home until she was24. “We had a very nice time. I have never felt the need to sit in a lonelystudent room.”
Johan Derksen
Nest scent and fidelity keep Angela de Jong on her apparently unflappablecourse. She attaches great importance to winter sports holidays with the wholefamily. She cannot imagine that she will ever live anywhere other thanRotterdam, or work anywhere other than at the AD, where she received her TVcolumn in 2010. When she describes “the prototype AD reader” who has toidentify with her pieces, it is also about her parents. “People who have acertain amount of wealth, who like cycling, going out for dinner, takingvacations once or twice a year, and celebrating their birthday in a circle oftoast.”
On television she stands up for people who have trouble saying goodbye toZwarte Piet, for villages that resist the arrival of an asylum seekers’center. Sometimes she sounds like a front woman with a following. Thatstarted, she thinks, with Brexit and the rise of Trump. “Panic in Hilversum,it had to be different, they also had to reach the common man.” It gave heropinions a political edge, she has been called the populist among TV critics.She thinks she is a bit more right-wing than the average journalist, she votesVVD. “But absolutely no FVD and no PVV. And I also regularly get to my headthat I am a leftist whore. So is it really that big of a deal? I always justcall it: common sense.”
A wasp begins to annoy her. “Go and play outside,” she tells him. She missesthe electronic fly swatter she has at home. “Then it will be flambéed.”
A recurring point of criticism is its independence. Can you write objectivelyabout talk shows where you are a regular at home? Nonsense, she thinks.Political commentators also walk around the Binnenhof, sports commentators arealso along the line. „And then I would be so complete with Eva Jinek_starstruck_ that I can never write critically about her again.” Some programsreimburse their guests. In the beginning she sometimes took it, now shedoesn’t. „ Today Inside pays 1,000 euros at a time. Quite a nice amount. ButI have a good salary at the AD. So I’ll have them donate that to charity,recently Giro555” (for disaster relief).
She appreciates Johan Derksen, “someone who is straightforward and who daresto go against the grain”. Which doesn’t mean she always spares him. Last monththey collided in Today Inside about John de Mol, about whom she is much toocritical according to Derksen and he is much too positive according to her.After the broadcast last spring in which Derksen confessed as a youthful sinto have once shoved a candle between the legs of a drowsy woman – or put itdown, in its revised version – her column read: ‘Never thought that Derksencould sink so low’.
Two days later she was sitting next to him again on the program. She held theadmonishing tone. When Derksen starts talking about “the cancel and wokeculture that is against us”, she says that he plays too much in the victimrole. A little later: “And I do not belong to the woke culture, nor to thecancel family.”
About that woke culture. In 2017, Zwarte Piet was still black for you. How isthat now?
“Well, I’ve grown with it. I have seen from my children that they don’t give adamn whether or not they recognize Filemon Wesselink in a soot wipe.”
For now, she wants to continue as a TV critic. She can’t imagine anythingnicer. Zapping, she sits in front of the TV and waits to be surprised. Thathappens about once a week. “Every day is impossible, I’m sure of that.”
Surprisingly, she found a contestant in the final season of the reality series_au pairs_ on NPO3. „Very cheerful, spontaneous, not the kind of millennialwho puts her breasts in the window in a crop top. She was a welder, came fromTholen, loved DJing and fishing. And yet it turned out that there was a lotgoing on in that head. She likes women and didn’t dare say that at home.” Thattouched her. “On the outside, I hadn’t seen her struggle with that sort ofthing.” It became a column. Why? “Maybe readers have a child or grandchild whofeels that way. Or if only that ten more people are going to watch thatprogram, that that girl is seen. I give her that too.”