The Blue Sofa: I'm A Celebrity – Come Sit Down On Me!

The thing that sticks out most in my memory? Difficult question. Sky du Mont, perhaps. Apparently I wasn’t comfortable enough for him that time he jumped up in the middle of the conversation – and didn’t come back. But of course, it may also have been because he had just had a bit of a showdown with the ZDF TV presenter Luzia Braun. That was before the cameras were running, and not in front of an audience. But I was there. I was always there: at the premiere of Günter Grass’s book “Peeling the Onion,” when he spoke for the first time in public about his Waffen SS membership; when Reiner Langhans’s graphic description of his love stories made the presenter blush – and not just her either; when rock band “Ärzte” singer Farin Urlaub talked about his trip to India in unusually serious tones. Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Der Club Bertelsmann’s Blue Sofa. And I must be honest: my career as a celebrity was rather an accident.

 

In principle a normal living-room job would have been fine for me, but sometimes things turn out otherwise. I had no idea what the club people had in mind for me when they bought me over nine years ago - incidentally, in a furniture shop in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, where Der Club is headquartered, if you’re interested. My color, this electric blue, just has that attention-grabbing effect, as Christiane Munsberg is always saying. If you didn’t know: Christiane is head of culture at DirectGroup, but that’s her official title. For me she’s a bit like my mother, the founding mother of the Blue Sofa. Since 2000, we’ve usually spent the entire working day together, because if there isn’t a book fair or suchlike, then I am always in her Berlin office, and she invites her guests to sit on me.

In 2000, at the Book Fair in Leipzig for the first time

But I digress. Der Club’s idea at the time was to launch its own book program on television – starring me, in fact. In 2000, I made my first appearance at the Book Fair in Leipzig. Back then, about five interviews with authors were conducted on me per day. So I still had some free time in between. At this year’s Leipzig Book Fair, I had nearly triple the workload.

However, back then the fact that all the conversations were streamed live on the Internet was at least as important as the interviews. Other media companies became aware of me as a result of this, and since then every event with me has been a cooperation between several partners: ZDF is on board, making sure that their cameras show me at my very best. Deutschlandradio Kultur is also involved, usually recording the conversations, and the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" has been in on the action since 2007; and all of them help with the moderating and print advertising. But overall supervision, of course, lies with Der Club Bertelsmann. And it works wonderfully. "No media company is as well connected in the book industry as Bertelsmann," as Christiane is always saying.

"The publishers are fighting to sit on me"

As a result, I’ve had them all: thriller king Frederick Forsyth, Ken Follett, Paulo Coelho, Alice Schwarzer, Konstantin Wecker, Frank Schätzing - around 1,100 authors in total over the past ten years, I’d guess, including literary heavyweights such as Günter Grass, Orhan Pamuk, Umberto Eco, Daniel Kehlmann - and more literal heavyweights like the two Klitschko brothers. There are always long discussions in advance about who will sit on me. Without exaggerating, you could say that the publishers are fighting to sit on me - as Christiane is always saying. It’s an amusing image: people literally ending up black and blue over a blue sofa, but because we’d never let it come to that, Christiane always draws up a list of possible candidates in good time before each fair. Most of them have over 60 pages of closely written text of names and information. At a big conference with our media partners at the Berlin offices of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung,” a final decision is then made on who we take.

If I'm honest though: it doesn’t really matter to me who it is, personally. Unless it comes to incidents like some time ago. During the interview with one author all the lights in the hall went out suddenly. It didn’t half hurt when the poor woman got into a flap and dug her fingernails into my fabric for a moment. It turned out that the hall manager had switched off the main fuse - in the middle of the conversation.

The blue fabric is specially made

But it’s also somewhat strange that these things are always happening to me. After all, and not a lot of people know this, I do have a twin brother - there is a second blue sofa. They had to buy him, because there were two simultaneous events once at the Frankfurt Book Fair where my presence was indispensable to both. Admittedly - but you mustn’t tell anyone - the second Blue Sofa isn’t quite as blue as me. My fabric is specially made, and can’t be reordered.

But copying is ok. For example, DirectGroup in China managed to copy me once for a local event in 2007. I wasn’t annoyed about it, though - I’m not really keen on traveling, as this involves me being broken down into three parts, packed into a wooden crate and then shipped as cargo. I don’t like the way I get bumped around in the back of a truck.

More than 1,000 people at the Hape Kerkeling “sitting”

And I’m pretty tough, you know – sometimes I turn into quite the hot seat. With Hape Kerkeling, for example, there were once more than 1,000 people squashed into the small area in front of me. Or Mario Adorf, who leaned back luxuriously into my blue upholstery and told the perplexed presenter that he knows after 30 seconds whether he is going to sleep with a woman or not. Or Günter Grass. I still remember everything clearly: it was on September 4, 2006 at 8:00 p.m. at the Berliner Ensemble when he gave his first public interview after the publication of his scandalous book “ Peeling the Onion, ” sitting on yours truly. You can’t imagine the commotion that evening. Several times, I thought: this mob of photographers is going to be the end of me.

Thankfully nothing happened and everything went peacefully. Who knows, maybe it was the red wine, which Günter likes to drink when he sits on me. Red wine and chocolate. With most of the other authors we serve water, and only still water at that, so that during the interview there’s no ... well, you know what I’m talking about. The only other exception is Sven Regener. He goes for freshly poured Pilsner lager.

"You simply cover all media"

And since we’re on the topic, let me tell you a secret: a lot of authors are also so happy to come to us because the catering in our so-called "sofa canteen" is so good. At book fairs most writers are in such a rush going from meeting to meeting that they have no time to eat. Quite apart from that, often the publishers only provide biscuits. For us it’s different; here you can take time to polish off a roll or a hot sausage.

But this is only my opinion, of course. Christiane has another theory: "You simply cover all media," she tells me every time I wonder why I get such a great response. Advance notice of the conversations are printed in the club's catalog, Deutschlandradio airs recordings, and the ZDF’s documentary channel, reports live from the book fair over several days and makes me the longest literary program on German television.

"Maintaining the current quality in the years to come"

Is there anything else you want to know? Perhaps what’s going to happen with me in future? It’s true, of course, that nine years is indeed a long time. Next year is our tenth anniversary, which might make a sofa think, perhaps. Let me put it like this: I can’t work much more than I do now. After all, I'm no longer a youngster. "It's about maintaining the current quality in the years to come," says Christiane. At the very most, I could perhaps step up the workload by increasing the amount of unscheduled appearances I make away from book fairs and such. Last year, for example, I was at the Salzburg Festival, which was fantastic. I didn’t mind being packed up in my travel box for that. And otherwise: let’s be surprised what comes. As is well known, the best trips are always into the wild blue yonder!