The 22-year-old history student spent almost two years on a popular French quiz show – becoming a multimillionaire in the process. He discusses the importance of curiosity, frugality and 10-11 hours sleep a night
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eing a TV general-knowledge quiz champion is a funny kind of fame, because random strangers want to test you on all sorts of trivia. “Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street, a car slows, the window goes down and someone screams: ‘Capital of Brunei?’ I answer and they drive off – it’s amusing really,” says Émilien, a 22-year-old history student who this summer became not only the most successful French gameshow contestant of all time, but the biggest gameshow winner in European history and the world record-holder for the most solo consecutive appearances on a TV quizshow.
And everyone, of course, wants to know how he did it.
Émilien, known only by his first name, bounded on to France’s popular general knowledge quizshow, Les Douze Coups de Midi (The Twelve Strokes of Noon) in September 2023 – wearing odd socks for good luck – with only one aim: to reach the next round.
