Henk Van Der Meyden

Vocation

Lifestyle

Traits

Family

Dutch entertainment journalist, gossip columnist, publisher and theatrical producer. Henk grew up as eldest of two children. His father was a butcher, his mother worked in the Bouwmeester Revue theatre. His grandmother had a hostel for artists, where he often stayed. He was harassed at secondary school (MULO). Henk began writing at puberty child stories in Het Vaderland. In 1953 he reported on parties and funerals for the Haagsch Dagblad. At age 19 he wrote radio plays for the AVRO. He wrote in the sixties as entertainment journalist for women's magazines as Margriet en Libelle. On 1 April 1958 Van der Meyden got a job with De Telegraaf, the largest Dutch daily morning newspaper. He first worked as police reporter, but in 1959 he got his own showbiz page. His "Privé" page became the most visited page of the paper. A telephone call or quick interview of 5 minutes , could in his hands become blown up to a whole paper page with "hot" celebrity news. He worked at least 80 hours a week, an even managed to write biographies of his heroes Romy Schneider, Catherina Valente and as ghostwriter the autobiography of Max Heymans. In 1966 Van de Meyden started music productions. In 1967 he erected Theaterbureau Concerto and later changed the name in Stardust Holding. Between 1974 and 1980 his Club Privé dancing at the Leidseplein of Amsterdam was the place for the jetset and other attention seeking persons to be and of course a source of "news" for his daily page. Of course his private page in Netherlands largest newspaper was also an advertising tool for his productions. In 1977 he started a weekly gossip magazine with the name "Privé". He sold half a million copies of it per week and became multi-millionaire. He also started to give interviews with celebrities on TROS television (1977-1986), later with SBS (1996-97). He also wrote best-sellers about celebrities and since 1971 he organised International circus events. He also managed to get Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and the Bolshoi Ballet to Carré, Amsterdam. Since 1991 he also produced Dutch musical in the London West End: "A Night at the Cotton Club" (1991), "Josephine" (1991), "The Sound of Motown" (1995), Mahalia (1996), "The Glory of Gospel" (1996), "Rembrandt De Musical" (2006), "Crazy Shopping" (2010) and "Yab Yum" (2012) On 7 January 1987 he (49) married in Den Haag the then 33 years old Monica Strotmann. On 16 September 1990 at 8.45 PM their daughter Elisa was born in Amsterdam. Link to Dutch Wikipedia