"I have several hundred thousand pieces": Nicolas, a candidate from Var in "Lego Masters" on M6 this Monday evening

December 2020, the Lego Masters craze arrives on M6 with Eric Antoine as master of ceremonies. The concept is simple, brick-crazed pairs compete in themed events and the grand winner leaves with a check for 20,000 euros. It's new and the show quickly finds its audience. Long seen as something cheesy, or not assumed, the brick has (re)become sexy. As proof, while we were happily commenting on this cathode discovery on Twitter, Rim'K, leader of the rap group 113, intruded into our private messages to assume his devouring passion for bricks: "Lego Life. I just finished the Lego Jurassic World, I'm not telling you," says the boss of Tonton du bled . And yes, we are all the same, we give Lego to our heirs to have the excuse to put them together. For his big return to the airwaves, still under the smiling Eric Antoine, new duos are taking the plunge, including two southerners: Gérald, 44, from Bouches-du-Rhône and Nicolas, a 34-year-old from Solliès-Pont, from Var. Nicolas is a train driver and, of course, his first memory with bricks is not insignificant.

4 million bricks

"When I was 3, my parents gave me a Duplo train, and I quickly discovered my two passions: rails and bricks," he says. It's been almost fifteen years since the Var native "got back into" Lego. At home, he has a room dedicated to his passion.

"I have several hundred thousand pieces, everything is organized by type of piece, by brick size, and the plates are organized by color. If you're not well organized, you'll never get by." Nicolas met Gérald at a Lego fan exhibition in the Var region. They hit it off right away. "Gérald is the more creative and crazy of the two of us," Nicolas explains. "I'm very straightforward, very down to earth, and I'm also the calmer one. (laughs) "

It's Gérald who insists on embarking on the M6 ​​adventure. After a failed first attempt, this fifth season is the right one. The duo is off for five weeks of intensive filming in Paris where bricks are omnipresent. 24 hours a day. Discovering the game board is an important moment for these big kids. "It's really well organized. (laughs) It's huge. For each piece, you have 3,000 copies, you have four million bricks available for the adventure, at the beginning you have to find your way around," he remembers. Above all, the tests are timed. "Time was our worst enemy, it was a constant worry because it was the first time we exercised our passion with this notion of a stopwatch. We actually got a bit stressed on the set."

Once the context has been discovered, the duo resumes their march forward.

Pirate fan

"We knew we had a very strong bond with Gérald, but this kind of adventure confirms it. I work in a job where stress is present 5% of the time, but I had never tamed such stress as on a test on Lego Masters." Rather into Lego City, his comfort zone with in particular all the constructions related to the train, professional deformation obliges, Nicolas confesses a certain attraction to the world of pirates. "When I was a child, around 1999, I had the pirate ship number 6289, a must-have from Lego, it marked me and I still have it at home."

When you're passionate and bitten by bricks, is the pleasure more in the construction or in the rendering? "I find my happiness in the eyes of people who look at what we've done. We slip in many details, winks. For example, I'm terrified of dogs and in all our creations there's a figurine that's chased by a dog. (laughs) What I like about this passion is sharing." While waiting for the first episodes to air, Nicolas makes a funny confession. Since returning from filming in March, he hasn't touched a single Lego. "When you spend five weeks eating, sleeping, thinking about Lego, you need a bit of air afterward. It's the first time in my life where the only thing I had to think about on a daily basis was Lego, it's quite a unique life." In any case, it is said that the pilot of the day sets the tone and that this fifth season is promising with, in particular, events organized at the Bourget aerodrome, in the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution but also events linked to the Batman and Star Wars franchises.

Lego Masters, this Monday at 9:10 p.m., on M6.