Talk show DWDD ends; Singer Liesbeth List dies at age 78

The Netherlands is saying goodbye to two greats on Friday. Singer Liesbeth List died at age 78 in her hometown of Soest on Wednesday, her family confirmed to NOS on Friday. And talk show De Wereld Draait Door's final episode is broadcasting tonight. 

List was known as the Grande Dame of the Dutch chanson, thanks to songs like Pastorale, Aan de andere kant van de heuvels, Kinderen een kwartje, and Heb het leven lief, according to NOS. 

"Many people knew my mother as the somewhat mysterious daughter of a lighthouse keeper on Vlieland, the chanson who sang with Brel, Aznavour and Shaffy," List's daughter Elisah said to NOS. "For us she was first and foremost a special and sweet mother, grandmother and mother-in-law. We were able to give my mother a goodbye surrounded by her loved ones."

Tonight is also the last episode of De Wereld Draait Door. "Jesus, how I miss the audience in this studio. How they sat around us. How they moaned and laughed around us. Or how they cried. And how they turned Matthijs on every night," Nico Dijkshoorn said on Wednesday during his last performance on the show. For the past weeks, the show was filmed without an audience due to the coronavirus. 

The coronavirus threw the plans for the last episodes out of whack. "We had thought that in the last weeks we could afford to experience less of the issues of the day," editor-in-chief Igor Misev said. "We would have liked to do the things we like, like invite that guy we wanted to see again. And of course a festive last broadcast with lots of music, because music is just part of DWDD." But it was not meant to be.

De Wereld Draait Door has been a fixture on Dutch evening television for 15 years. It attracted an average of 1 million viewers every night. Over the past weeks, the program broke rating record after rating record, with around 4 million viewers.