2024-01-11 09:53:00
”I lost my pipe and my lighter, probably while taking the taxi.” Told like this, the story is not worth three lines. Except that…
It’s a special appeal, a bottle in the sea, that Francis Lalanne, the singer we met yesterday in Brussels, is launching. “The person who brings me the pipe, and especially the lighter, will be entitled to my recognition, my friendship and my financial generosity.”
A briquette, tell you where?
”The day my father died, it was the last gift he gave me. He felt himself leaving, he held me in his arms, he spoke to me like he had never done before. He had this lighter in his hands and handed it to me as the most precious treasure. I wanted it so much. I never imagined that I would misplace it.”
Yet that’s what happened during the holidays. It is December 27, the Wednesday after Christmas. In the afternoon, Francis Lalanne, who has lived in Brussels for several years, found his son, who had arrived from Australia.
The artist is certain: in the middle of the afternoon, the pouch containing the pipe and the lighter was still in his hands. This is a black faux leather pouch, a small hand-sized pencil case. The singer’s name was not on the cover. There were no names.
At the start of the evening, the singer and his son Neokahn took the taxi near the Grand-Place, to go to Jette, to “Central”, the brasserie of his friend Sébastien Vandenheede. At 7:06 p.m., the driver dropped them off at Place Laneau.
But as they sat down at the table, Francis Lalanne, looking for the kit in his pockets, noticed that he no longer had it with him. Lalanne immediately returned to Place Laneau. Not finding the pouch, convinced that he had rather forgotten it on the seat, he contacted the taxi company. But the driver searched the vehicle: nothing.
The pipe, which resembles that of Sherlock Holmes, is a Dunhill White Spot, Cumberland model. Francis Lalanne bought it at La Tête d’Or, near the Grand-Place. It evoked for him the memory of his grandfather. The pipe has a black ebonite stem. The stove is made of heather root.
In fact, the singer places even more importance on the lighter, a gold-plated Dupont. More precisely: a TS Dupont Ligne 2 gold, old model (over 40 years old), with toothed wheel flame. He had just had the stone replaced.
As a child, this lighter fascinated Francis Lalanne. It was part, he confides, “of a ritual that I had with my father when writing”. His father had received it as a gift from his brother, the Uruguayan poet and diplomat Jose Aïub Manzor, the man who had Spanish voted as the working language at the United Nations: “I admired my uncle. It was he who introduced me to poetry. Without him, I would not have become a poet.”
Very sensitive to touch, Lalanne explains that the sensation of this lighter in his hand linked him directly to his missing father and uncle. The emotion overwhelms him. Tears are not far away. “When I had the lighter in my hand, it was as if I was still holding my father’s hand a little. It was the last object that connected me to him. By losing him, it’s like I’ve lost my father forever.”
The TS Dupont Ligne 2 gold, model over 40 years old, with toothed wheel flame. ©DR
Francis Lalanne guarantees that he will be “financially very generous” to whoever brings it to him. On reflection, he does not rule out having misplaced the cover at Le Roy d’Espagne, the well-known establishment at the Grand-Place. More likely, he would have forgotten it on the taxi seat when paying for the fare. Or, otherwise, Place Laneau, when getting out of the vehicle. “Perhaps the customer the taxi picked up after us found it and took it without imagining the value these objects have for me.”
In addition to their friendship, the person who brings back the lighter will get more money than by reselling it to a third party or putting it for sale on sites like eBay. “There was, I’m sure, someone who found my kit which contained the lighter, the pipe, the pipe tamper and the tobacco pouch, and simply kept it. It is this person that I address as a brother or a sister. It would be my best Christmas story. And I believe in it because I know that in Belgium, everything is possible.”
Popular singer and self-proclaimed world citizen, Francis Lalanne has, in recent years, been at the center of various controversies. A yellow vest from the start, he has been widely talked about for his conspiratorial positions on the subject of the Covid vaccine. An investigation was opened in the middle of the pandemic against him for “provoking the commission of attacks on the fundamental interests of the nation”, but this was closed without further action by the Paris prosecutor’s office. More recently, his show with Dieudonné at the Zénith in Paris, ultimately canceled, caused a lot of noise. In 2023, he also had to deal with French justice, which had to rule following an altercation between the 64-year-old singer and his ex-partner. The charges of violence and harassment against a spouse were not upheld by the prosecution, which applied a criminal composition procedure, i.e. a fine of 800 euros for the singer and a ban on coming to the home of his ex- companion.
> Information concerning Francis Lalanne’s lighter can be sent to the editorial office at [email protected]
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