Mooi! Weer de Leeuw
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Mooi! Weer de Leeuw is a popular Dutch television show hosted by comedian Paul de Leeuw. The programme is produced by VARA, one of the contributors to the Dutch public broadcasting group Publieke Omroep.
Broadcast weekly on Saturday evenings, the programme consists of celebrity interviews, variety performances and interaction with the studio audience. The show has a distinctive, quirky feel based upon the personal comedy and tastes of de Leeuw. The show has its own small band who are present in the studio each week (in the style of several American talk-shows), but also features frequent performances from mainstream acts. A notable example is Robbie Williams, who was interviewed in English and then performed one of his songs.
Mooi! Weer de Leeuw is probably best known internationally for its notorious appearance in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest, where de Leeuw gave the results of the Dutch televote from the programme's studio (the show is usually broadcast during the time period occupied by Eurovision). De Leeuw, who is openly homosexual, flirted with the male presenter Sakis Rouvas and gave out his supposed mobile phone number. The exchange was broadcast around the world to hundreds of millions of viewers and earned de Leeuw criticism from several of the event's commentators, some of whom refused to translate it.
The programme is broadcast in the Netherlands on Nederland 1 and is simulcast globally on the Dutch international channel BVN.
