Hundreds of mourners gathered at the funeral service for the French TV stars of the Bogdanov twins (Bogdanoff), who died on New Year's Eve from covid, according to the Daily Mail. In the crowd of farewells in the Madeleine church, singer Francis Lalanne, one of the leaders of the French anti-vaxxers, as well as philosopher and ex-minister for youth, education and science Luc Ferry were seen. The latter said that he warned the brothers “fifty times” to get vaccinated, but they refused.
During the mass, the relatives put up a joint photo of the twins with their motto - "Nothing is impossible in the Universe!" For the Bogdanovs, any boundaries were indeed a conventional concept. Igor and Grigory (Grishka) were born in 1949 in Gascony. Their father was the artist Yuri Ostasenko-Bogdanov, who was hijacked during the Second World War from the USSR and remained in Europe after the war, and the Austrian aristocrat Maya Kolovrat-Krakowska. The biological father of the latter was, according to legend, Roland Hayes - the famous tenor, the first black American to gain international fame as a classical musician.
In the castle of my grandmother, where the brothers were brought up, there was a huge library, and from childhood they were fond of astronomy and aviation. The Bogdanovs graduated from military school and then studied applied mathematics at the Institute of Political Science and the School of Practice for Higher Studies in Paris. In 1976, they published their first book, Keys to Science Fiction, with a foreword by Roland Barthes.
Soon their finest hour came - the brothers got on the oldest TV channel in France TF1 as authors and presenters of the scientific show "Time X" (Temps X). The action of the program took place inside the model of the spaceship. Dressed as astronauts, brothers Igor and Grishka Bogdanoff talked about astronomy and quantum physics, interspersed scientific news with popular TV shows like Doctor Who and The Twilight Zone. The show, which started in 1979, became mega-popular and aired until 1987. By this time, the twins had become national stars, known by name to any Frenchman.
In 1991, the couple published another book - "God and Science" (Dieu et la Science). She managed to become a bestseller in France before the Bogdanovs were sued by an American scientist who accused them of plagiarism. The brothers managed to settle the case out of court, but the lawsuit made them think about their copyright status. The Bogdanovs decided to obtain scientific degrees and began to work on doctoral dissertations. They succeeded, although not without difficulty. The passing score they scored turned out to be minimal, and soon after the defense a scientific scandal broke out: one researcher, having studied the Bogdanovs' dissertations, declared them a "set of meaningless buzzwords" that "have no scientific value" and proved it. Nonetheless, the brothers were left with their doctorates.
Around the same time, the appearance of Igor and Grishka began to change. The first metamorphoses became apparent in 2010, when the 60-year-old twins appeared at a Chopard party with disproportionately drawn chins, pouting cheeks and pouting lips. Experts believe that the brothers underwent many plastic surgeries, during which they received multiple implants on the chin and cheeks, Botox and other fillers. There is a version that the Bogdanovs sought to reproduce the appearance of the socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein. Another hypothesis is that the metamorphosis was explained by acromegaly, a disease caused by a dysfunction of the pituitary gland, which results in an increase in facial features. The brothers themselves denied that they had consulted surgeons, but either jokingly or seriously admitted that they had been subjected to some kind of "experiments". “We are proud to be like aliens”, - they said.
In recent years, the Bogdanovs provoked another surge of interest in themselves, announcing that they were involved in the creation of bitcoin. The announcement made the brothers the subject of ridicule and spawned internet memes about how the twins control the international cryptocurrency markets.
The only thing they were different in was their personal life. Nothing is known about Grigory's partners and children. Igor had several marriages and six children. His last wife, Amelie de Bourbon-Parme, said after the brothers died: “This is fate. They could not be apart for a long time. " Relatives of the Bogdanovs said that on Wednesday the brothers will be buried in the village of Saint-Lary in southwestern France, where they were born.