"... en ce moment le livre est en rade... Nos Giscard, Chaban, Mitterrand retiennent toute l'attention du public..."

Manuscript letter dated and signed, 27 lines from Alphonse Boudard to his great friend and companion in boozy lunches, the Brussels journalist André Tillieu who was, like Alphonse Boudard, a great friend of Georges Brassens but also of Louis Nucéra.
Envelope included.
This is the first manuscript letter in which Alphonse Boudard adopts the familiar form of address with his Brussels friend.
"Ami,
merci de ton petit mot. Je suis sûr que ton papier de Relax sera de première. En ce moment le livre est en rade... Nos Giscard, Chaban, Mitterrand retiennent toute l'attention du public. En + j'ai eu un mauvais article de Mathieu Galey dans l'Express... Mais on verra bien ! Ca peut repartir pour les vacances ou... à la Trinité. Salut mec ! à te lire... je te serre la pogne. Aboudard. Le bouquin de Louis est admirable... L'émotion passe... tout est là !" ["Friend, thanks for your note. I'm sure your Relax piece will be first-rate. At the moment the book is stalled... Our Giscard, Chaban, Mitterrand are holding all the public's attention. Plus I had a bad review from Mathieu Galey in L'Express... But we'll see! It could pick up again for the holidays or... at Trinity. Cheers mate! Looking forward to hearing from you... I shake your hand. Aboudard. Louis's book is admirable... The emotion comes through... that's everything!"]
André Tillieu from Brussels, very close friend and biographer of Georges Brassens, maintained an epistolary correspondence with Alphonse Boudard for almost thirty years, from 1972 until the latter's death in 2000.
The cheeky Parisian writer quickly showed him friendship, considering him one of the rare critics who understood him perfectly, to the point of explaining clearly in his reviews what he himself expressed only incompletely and sometimes confusedly in his books.
André Tillieu thus became part of the small circle of Alphonse Boudard's true friends on the same level as le Gros Georges (Georges Brassens), le Niçois (Louis Nucéra) and René Fallet, with whom he loved to share hearty well-watered meals and cycling trips. As death gradually took away his best friends one by one, André Tillieu remained one of Alphonse's very last pals.