Alfred Biolek is dead

The entertainer Alfred Biolek is dead. He died on Friday morning. The former television presenter and talk show host fell asleep peacefully in his Cologne flat, his adopted son Scott Biolek-Ritchie told the German Press Agency. Biolek had been in poor health for some time. He was 87 years old. Biolek was born in 1934 in Freistadt in what was then Czechoslovakia. In 1946, his family moved to Waiblingen near Stuttgart. After graduating from high school in 1954, Biolek first studied law and started working for ZDF in February 1963 as a legal advisor in the legal department. Shortly afterwards he switched to editorial work. Biolek is considered one of the pioneers of talk and cooking shows in Germany. He was closely associated with WDR. Together with Rudi Carrell, for example, he developed the Saturday evening show "Am laufenden Band", the most successful programme of the 1970s. At the same time, he gained his first experience as a presenter on "Kölner Treff" and got his own show, "Bio's Bahnhof", in 1978. One of the last great TV legends After that, he was a constant presence on German television for 30 years. He was his own brand with three letters: Bio. His era only ended in 2007 with the last episode of the cooking show "alfredissimo", in which he had spent many years standing at the cooker with guests, chatting and tasting wine. "My time is over now," he said at the time. In 2010, he suffered severe cranial injuries in a fall from a spiral staircase and fell into a coma. Since then, he has lived a rather secluded life in Cologne. Meanwhile, numerous people have expressed their condolences. For example, Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke) wrote on Twitter: "Alfred Biolek was a great personality and a clever voice in the public sphere. His broadcasts were refreshing and new! Thank you for many wonderful hours!"