Breast-kissing scandal show faces homophobia claims

Presenter Cyril Hanouna, who urged a panelist to kiss a woman’s breast live on air, is “obsessed with homosexuality,” the French association of LGBT journalists (AJL) claims. 

The presenter and panelists on the popular TV review show Touch pas a man poste brought up the subject of homosexuality 42 times across 20 shows in November, “often to laugh about it in a disparaging manner”, the group said. 

Examples listed by AJL included panelist and on-air breast kisser Jean-Michel Maire speaking about gays who had not come out: “To be in the closet, from which we have the expression ‘to have a broom up one’s arse’,” he said. 

The group also slammed the show for repeatedly targeting Matthieu Delormeau, a panelist whose homosexuality was the butt of 27 jokes in November. 

France’s media watchdog has previously issued a warning to the C8 channel after receiving a large number of complaints about the show. Referring to jokes at Delormeau’s expense in September, the body said it was concerned by the “repeated character of this kind of sequence and the imitative effects it could induce in a young audience.”

AJL said the regularity of jokes at the expense of gays was “worrying”. With a large audience of mainly young viewers, the show had a “particular responsibility…whether it likes it or not”. 

Despite the scandal that garnered international headlines just weeks earlier, the show also included 20 examples of sexism in November, AJL claimed.