Curiosidades

Also famous for the "dictée de Pivot": each year in France, he writes a very difficult text to train French people to orthography, grammar... Lots of French-speaking persons like this challenge.

Became a member of the Académie Goncourt, the association that yearly awards the Prix Goncourt, France's top literary award. Although he never wrote a fiction book, members of the jury chose and elected him as "the man that has done the most these last decades for French books and literature", thanks to his TV shows. (5 de outubro de 2004)

Has his look-alike puppet in the French show "Guignols de l'info, Les" (1988).

At age 10 Pivot went to a Catholic boarding school where he discovered a passion for sport, while he was more average at traditional school subjects, except French and history.

On 10 April 2008 Pivot was made an honorary member of the Order of Canada.

In 1970 he hosted a humorous daily radio programme which often raised political issues and was not appreciated by President Georges Pompidou.

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.

After starting law studies in Lyon Pivot entered the Centre de formation des journalistes (CFJ) in Paris, where he met his future wife, Monique. He graduated second in his class.

In July 2021, Pivot posted a tweet about actress Françoise Arnoul, who had just died, in which he remarked that "young people in the 1950s dreamed about her breasts. But the ones seen in The Wreck were not hers. She confessed it to me on a broadcast. Still a minor, she was not allowed to be filmed naked.

In 1971 the Figaro Littéraire closed and Pivot joined Le Figaro. He left 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.

Pivot created Bouillon de culture, with the aim of broadening people's interests beyond reading. However, he eventually returned to books.

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 (in translation): "I propose to insert the word 'brexit' (without capital letter) 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." (The inclusion of the British expletive is supported two-fold by the Collins-Robert French Dictionary.).

He was chairman of the Académie Goncourt from 2014 to 2020.

In 1985, Pivot created the Championnats d'orthographe ("Spelling Championships") with linguist Micheline Sommant, which in 1992 became Championnats mondiaux d'orthographe ("World Spelling Championships"), then the Dicos d'or ("Golden Dictionaries") in 1993.

Pivot was a French journalist, interviewer and host of cultural television programmes.