Like so many things the fate of one French television’s most recognisable faces was sealed on a rainy Manchester night.
Darren Tulett has been dubbed the ‘French Alan Hansen’ but the story of his journey to fame is unusual to say the least.
After a drunken agreement with a friend on a night out in Manchester the university drop-out ventured to Paris without a plan and eventually landed a dream job as the face of English football.
“During the night my friend Nick, who I’d met on the first day of polytechnic, said to me would you be up to going to Paris for a few months and having a bit of a laugh?,” said Tulett.
“Apparently I said yes because he called me the next morning and said are you still on? And I said on what? And he said on for going to Paris and he told me the whole story and apparently I’d said yes and I thought, you know what, why not?
“So there we were with no idea what to do next and suddenly there was a plan we were going to Paris.”
Tullet, who originally hails from Brighton, admitted that he had never planned to have a prolonged period in the French capital but instead just wanted a cool story to tell when he returned home.
“We rolled into Paris and we knew one guy in town and we slept on his floor on the first night,” said the 48-year-old.
“From then on we were up around looking for a job and we got rejected from places like McDonalds and stuff and ended up getting a job at Berlitz which is quite a well-known language school”
After six years of teaching English Tulett’s French girlfriend told him he needed to ‘sort his life out’.
Despite not being one for making plans Tulett had always thought about a being a journalist and, considering his French was not quite up to scratch, the couple moved to Brighton to allow him to pursue a career.
However, while he had formulated some semblance of a plan putting it into action was a different story all together.
“It was all going horribly wrong because when I arrived in Dover the head of the BBC and the editor of the Times were not waiting for me,” said Tulett.
“I was living in Brighton on the dole so I basically made up a CV and went for a job interview and wangled my way into Bloomberg.
“And there I was as a junior sports reporter in London.”
After getting married Darren and his then pregnant wife returned to Paris where he spent six years as a roving sports reporter.
Darren’s network of contacts amassed during this time meant that an opportunity arose to talk about English football on the radio.
From this came the chance to be a part of a new European ‘match of the day’ showing the best action from the English, Spanish, German and Italian leagues.
Part of the show meant that a journalist from each country would be on-hand to talk about the highlights and when Tulett received a phone call he jumped at the chance.
“The four of us who were on this show were all completely crap the great thing in my favour was that the presenter was a really great pro and a nice guy and of the four crap people around the table I turned out to be the least crap,” Tulett says in a cheeky tone.
“They kept me on and little by little they changed the team but I hung in there and the show ran for years, I got taken on full time eventually and got given my own show a little bit later.”
“And here I am 15 years later now working on another TV channel and fronting shows and covering all the major sporting events and having a whale of a time – who would have believed it!”
Image courtesy of Atmospheriques via YouTube, with thanks.
