The rise and fall of French presidents’ love lives

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.

What can you buy for €25,420? Not now, of course, when that’s the average cost of the weekly shopping if you include a few extra tins of food and some toilet paper for the “hantavirus protection bunker.”

But in 2024, that kind of money went a lot further. It could get you, for example, the scooter that, almost a decade earlier, whisked French ex-President François Hollande to trysts with his then-lover (and now wife) Julie Gayet.

Yes, someone spent more than €25,000 on a gray scooter (a Piaggio MP3 125, to be precise) on which the former French president’s warm buttocks were pressed as he traversed the traffic in Paris.

Hollande’s romantic life was a big deal back in 2015 when Closer magazine exposed his affair with the actress. A picture splashed on the cover showed Hollande, who was then in a relationship with journalist Valérie Trierweiler, wearing a rather silly-looking helmet (from an aesthetic standpoint, not a safety one!).

The French press went into a frenzy, relishing the salacious detail of a security agent delivering an early-morning bag of croissants to the lovers (although it was later claimed the bag contained documents rather than pastries).

But the world has changed a lot since then, and there’s seemingly less interest in Emmanuel Macron’s personal life. A new book — “An (almost) perfect couple,” by Paris Match journalist Florian Tardif — claims that the reason why Brigitte Macron appeared to slap or push her husband in the face shortly before they disembarked from a flight in Vietnam last year was that she had discovered a message on his phone from Iranian-French star Golshifteh Farahani.

Tardif alleged that President Macron maintained a “platonic relationship” with Farahani for several months. However, some exchanges — which Tardif said he was forwarded by people close to Macron — “went quite far,” the journalist said.

Perhaps it’s because everyone involved says nothing is going on, but there’s markedly less interest in this story. The French don’t appear to be getting out the popcorn and waiting for the next salacious instalment (mind you, it’s hard to imagine the French munching on popcorn. Perhaps escargots au beurre persillé).

Maybe it wasn’t Hollande’s infidelity that was so interesting back then but that bag of (alleged) croissants! Maybe it’s because Macron is un canard boiteux and has just spent a tour of Africa not giving a shit — he told people off for speaking out of turn and went running with marathon legends (good practice if Brigitte looks at his phone again).

So, Jordan Bardella, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Edouard Philippe, Raphaël Glucksmann or whoever else fancies being the next president, make sure you have a high-profile affair during your term and bring sexy back to French politics.

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