The Riviera dream sometimes turns absurd. Eddy Mitchell owns a bastide on the heights above Saint-Tropez, gulf views, private screening room, the whole deal. Except that for the past few years, wild boars have turned the villa's grounds into a veritable battlefield.
The singer bought this large villa without having the means at first. The seller offered him a ten-year interest-free loan, he told the Journal du Dimanche. An unusual arrangement that says two things: the seller's eagerness to close, and the trust placed in the French rocker.
But the idyll didn't last. "My problem today is the boars. They've turned over the whole property," the singer explains, clearly annoyed. And no solution in sight. Local ecologists seem reluctant to step in, and even hunters appear hesitant in the face of this growing invasion.
Eddy Mitchell says he spends almost half the year in this bastide, so it's not just a holiday cottage used two weeks in August. The place matters. Or mattered. The villa's showpiece: a large private screening room. Naturally.
Fortunately for him, the singer has another refuge in Paris, in the 16th arrondissement, Porte Dauphine. But there too, the love affair is over. "I'm not at all in love with Paris anymore. I'm truly Parisian and Paris no longer corresponds to what I like, I don't recognise Paris anymore," he told Le Parisien.
Between a property trashed by local wildlife and a capital he no longer recognises, the rocker makes do with what's left: memories, a cinema room, and boars that don't ask permission before ploughing through. Palace life, nature edition.
