How did it feel to be the hero of the festival ?

I have just finished two concerts in succession, so I felt totally exhausted. But I'm just letting it flow, clinging onto the lifeline of the festival which has music from the rap galaxy with Zebda to opera with José Van Damme. Although it's a great responsibility, I took it on in full knowledge of what I was doing.
That being said, I am very pleased at my reception from the public, which loves me, and also from the other artists I invited. There are all these young artists full of talent who have come and I am delighted. Les Femmouzes T, Fabulous Trobadors, are great, and I love them.

If we were to analyse your role in French song today, we could say you represented romantic love while Brel was torn love, Brassens was horny love and Gainsbourg erotic love. It's amazing the number of couples whose theme song is Tu verras or L'Ile de Ré.

I don't think I am a romantic singer. Of course, the feminine ideal looms large in my repertoire and inspiration. And I do more or less transpose my own life from song to song. All the women who have counted in my life, have been in my arms, are there. They can be counted like pearls on a string. My latest lot is for Hélène, four or five love songs like Bras dessus, bras dessous or Les Pas. It is true they are love songs ; after all, I am from the Pays d'Oc, a Latin singer. And I belong to the generation of troubadours for whom women were the very heart of song, prayer, desire. But troubadours also invented courtly love, love in space, in other words, love in the eyes. I was capable of giving you a child just by looking at you, sort of thing.

You mean, you've had lots of children out of wedlock ?
Well, I haven't made children only with my eyes, fortunately. (chuckle)

You have eulogised many artists in your songs, such as Marilyn Monroe, Serge Gainsbourg, Audiberti or more recently the French singer Renaud. Who will be your next subject ?
I haven't eulogised them. It is more songs about people, men and women who have touched me. It is as if they and I belonged not to the same physical race but to the same mental race, if you see what I mean. So that is why I wrote the Chanson pour le Maçon for Jacques Audiberti. And then I found Gainsbourg was a totally fascinating person too, whose life in this end of the century was filled with an erotic style of writing which was unique. So I wanted to pay him a small homage, to the "master of the minor arts".

For this Festival of Troyes, we have seen many jazz artists with whom you have worked: Bernard Lubat and his Company, Richard Galliano and Aldo Romano, Maurice Vander who always accompanies you on the piano, and others.
I met these artists as I moved around. As I am a jazz fan, I go out looking for artists who inspire me. Jazz has played an essential role in my repertoire because I have been accompanied by the best jazz artists of the sixties, such as Pierre Michelot, André Ceccarelli, Bernard Lubat, and all those people. Then I met Galliano and his accordion, who joined the band. For me, his accordion was an instrument that I tended to despise a little, but which, thanks to him, has regained popularity in France.

If I say 69 to you, what does it evoke ?
If I were Gainsbourg, it would be my "année érotique", obviously But unfortunately, it is more likely to remind me of my age, since I was 69 on September 9th this year. I was born on 09 / 09 / 1929. A full house of nines...

While not wishing to give you bad luck...
Yah! come on! You couldn't! (laugh)

...at your venerable age, many people would be thinking of retiring. But not you ?
Well, of course, I do sometimes think that I have come to the end of a career that has after all been pretty long. I have been through quite a number of patches of success and failure. But that is the pattern of any artist, the rough with the smooth. That being said, for the moment, I must admit I have not yet thought of retiring. Yesterday I began a song which is called The Torchlight Retreat. We'll see how it works out. It should cast a bit of light in the gloom (laughs).