De Leeuw is not Flemish: He’s Dutch through and through, though year after year Flemish television viewers vote him their favourite foreign presenter. In March he was awarded a Flemish Television Star award for his VTM show, a version of his Dutch show with mainly Flemish guests.

Paul Henri De Leeuw was born in Rotterdam in 1962 and studied in Delft to become a teacher. There he discovered a hankering to be an artist and applied unsuccessfully to switch to the theatre academy in Maastricht. Undaunted, he took part in the Cameretten cabaret festival in Delft, won the personality prize, and was asked back as host the following year.

Since then he’s done just about everything in showbiz: radio, TV presenter, singer, game-show host, recording artist, scriptwriter, producer and film actor. He’s also a crusader for gay rights, one of the highest-paid media figures in the Netherlands, and came in 86th place in a poll to find the greatest Dutch person of all time (won by the late Pim Fortuyn after William of Orange was disqualified for being German).

Whatever his many talents, it’s the constant sense of danger surrounding him which has ensured his continued success. He broke barriers when in 1990 his friend René Klijn, then dying of Aids, came on his show to talk openly and duet with him. He had one series pulled when he portrayed singer Anneke Grönloh as a drunk. He ripped a man’s thong off on live television and won a lawsuit on the grounds that anyone ought to have foreseen his unpredictability.

VTM will have to wait and see if the dope-smoking incident (which was never broadcast) will lead to another legal complaint. In the meantime they can enjoy the upside: De Leeuw was doing what his audience expects, and his audiences can only grow as a result.