Before his career as a comedian, Jeanfi Janssens worked as a steward for 20 years. But his very first plane flight was a real nightmare…
Before becoming the offbeat comedian we know, Jeanfi Janssens had a completely different career in the air since he was a steward with Air France for twenty years. And the 52-year-old actor remembers very well his very first experience in this profession… and the theft was catastrophic!
Jeanfi Janssens, his first complicated flight: “I had to make them believe that I was in control”
The comedian, now 52, has extremely vivid memories of his very first flight, as he told the radio Here : “My first flight as a steward, I was all alone with my 50 passengers, because that’s the rule in the air industry. And I had to make them believe that I mastered my environment when not at all (…) I had theoretical training, but in practice, I discovered the field a little“.
At the time, the young steward had been taken seriously “scares” and hardly felt up to the task. He also asked himself many questions: “Will you be able to close the plane door? Is it closed properly? Did you bring the slide?“Luckily for the passengers, they had no idea of Jeanfi Janssens’ anxiety,”neurosis” And “full of knocks“, at that moment…
Jeanfi Janssens, how his job as a steward helped him: “I realized that…”
His experience in the air, sometimes lunar, has particularly helped him in his career as a comedian. “I think it was the plane that developed my repartee“, he assured before specifying: “I wanted to make people laugh, I knew I would get attention. But having enough repartee to find the timing to make people laugh, it was the planes that sharpened that“. Learn to “deal with annoying people“was also a real test:”There aren’t many, but it only takes one in 400 and it will ruin you for the whole flight.“.
Jeanfi Janssens, who was increasingly managing to make passengers and colleagues laugh, finally saw the tide turn when one of the flight attendants working with him entered him into a comedy competition in Toulouse, without him knowing it. A real helping hand from destiny since the native of Maubeuge with a complicated love life finished finalist out of 600 candidates.
“I realized that I could make a real audience laugh. I had a head full of sketches based on anecdotes about my family, but also as a steward“, he told La Dépêche du Midi. He then took unpaid leave in 2015 and finally managed to make a name for himself in comedy.
