Pivot was born in Lyon, the son of grocers. During World War II, his father, Charles Pivot, was taken prisoner and his mother moved the family home to the village of Quincié-en-Beaujolais, where Bernard Pivot started school. In 1945 his father was released and the reunited family returned to Lyon. At age 10, Pivot went to a Catholic boarding school where he discovered a consuming passion for sport; a passion which helped teachers overlook his general mediocrity in all traditional school subjects except French language and history. After starting law studies in Lyon, Pivot entered the Centre de formation des journalistes in Paris where he met his future wife, Monique. He graduated second in his class. After an internship at Le Progrès in Lyon, he studied economic journalism for a full year, then joined the Figaro Littéraire in 1958. In 1970, he hosted a humorous daily radio programme that often raised political issues, not appreciated by president Georges Pompidou. In 1971, the Figaro Littéraire closed and Pivot joined Le Figaro. He left, however, in 1974 after a disagreement with Jean d'Ormesson. Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber invited him to start a new project which led to the creation of a new magazine, Lire, a year later. Meanwhile, in April 1973 he had begun hosting a television program called Ouvrez les Guillemets on France's first TV network. In 1974, the ORTF was dissolved and Pivot started his Apostrophes programme. Apostrophes was first broadcast on Antenne 2 on January 10, 1975, and ran until 1990. Pivot then created Bouillon de culture, with the aim of broadening people beyond books. However, he eventually came back to books. On April 10, 2008, Pivot was made an honorary member of the Order of Canada. In the month before the UK was due to leave the European Union in October 2019, after three years of fruitless public debate, Pivot tweeted : “I propose to insert the word “brexit” into the French language. It will indicate a cacophonous and insoluble debate, a bloody shambolic reunion or assembly. Example: the meeting of the joint owners ended in brexit.”
Spelling championships
In 1985, with linguist Micheline Sommant, Pivot created the Championnats d'orthographe which in 1992 became Championnats mondiaux d'orthographe then in 1993 the Dicos d'or. These yearly contests are held in three phases:
During the spring, selection tests are organised with the press, in particular with Lire, and in a few local communities. These are multiple-choice questionnaires.
During the fall, the selected candidates meet region by region at the semi-finals. They are again given multiple-choice questionnaires, plus a dictation.
Then, during winter, the finals are held at a single place.
There are four categories: school juniors, juniors, professional seniors and amateur seniors. Participation is free of charge, except for the cost of the magazines that publishes the selection tests.
was inspired to create Inside the Actors Studio by a chance viewing of a Pivot program on cable TV. Lipton adapted Pivot's use of a Proust Questionnaire to one that he himself used at the end of each episode of Inside the Actors Studio. However, the question "If God exists, what would you like Him to tell you when you're dead ?" was considered potentially offensive for the US audience, and replaced by a more accepted "If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?" Pivot became aware that Lipton was inspired by his questionnaire, and invited Lipton to appear on the final episode of Bouillon de culture.
Controversy around childhood
On November 26, 1973, he invites the pedophile novelist Tony Duvert in his show Ouvrez les guillemets, who refuses, letting his editor ands supports Jérôme Lindon and Alain Robbe-Grillet promote his book. On May 30, 1975, he receives Vladimir Nabokov, the author of Lolita in Apostrophes ; on December 12, 1976, Michel Foucault criticizing psychoanalysis and "contractual sexuality" based on consent or non-consent, with René Schérer, Guy Hocquenghem and François Châtelet ; on October 14, 1983, Renaud Camus, defender of the pedophile cause; on April 23, 1982, Daniel Cohn-Bendit describing ambiguous relations with kids in kindergarten; on March 2, 1990, Gabriel Matzneff, whose book, Mes amours décomposés is highly criticized; on February 23, 2001, Catherine Dolto to talk about pedophile legalization, in Bouillon de Culture ; and in 2005, Michel Tournier, whose pedophile references where published in La Pléiade in 2017.
On March 17, 2013, he defends the book of Alexandre Postel, Un homme effacé, describing a man owning explicit children pictures in his computer and on October 30, 2016, La Mauvaise vie of Frédéric Mitterrand, as a "brave book, very brave, a kind of secular confession where each confession, as in the "Je me souviens…" of Georges Perec, starts with "Je regrette…". In 2017, neuropsychiatrist Louis Masquin, describes in the catholic review La Croix, the introduction of pedophile literature on French television in Bernard Pivot's shows as the "reflect of the "pedophile adventure", "considered approximately normal". In 2019, he underlines on Twitter that "cardinal, bishops and priests that rape children don't believe in heaven or hell", criticizing the influence of the Vatican II reform. In September 2019, he declares on Twitter: "In my generation, boys looked for little Swedish girls who had the reputation to be more open than French girls. I imagine our surprise, our fear, if we had approached a Greta Thunberg". Julien Bayou, from the ecologist party, Europe Écologie - Les Verts, answers: « you're talking of a minor » and French feminist Caroline de Haas asks him to delete his post what he refuses to do. He was immediately defended by essayist Eric Zemmour. In December, Bernard Pivot apologized for allowing Gabriel Matzneff to describe his relationships with teenage girls on his literary talkshows without being challenged by him.
