Pardon my French? Not a chance!

The antics of Francois Hollande reflects badly on the French President.

It would appear to be almost a job requirement for the President of France to have a mistress on the side as well as a wife.

And you do have to wonder where these odd little men get their energy from. For years they seem to have cheated and lied while being able to hide behind French privacy laws which meant their love lives were never revealed to the public.

The latest saga involves current President Francois Hollande who allegedly has been cheating on his partner Valerie Trierweiler with sultry actress Julie Gayet.

This tangled web becomes even more complicated when you remember that Hollande left his former partner of 30 years in 2007 and then set up home with journalist Trierweiler.

Looking at Hollande it is baffling that he would have supposedly intelligent, attractive women vying for his affections. Power must indeed be a potent aphrodisiac.

The perception is that Treirweiler is getting a taste of her own medicine and she isn’t well liked by the French. She was taken to hospital with “shock” when the whole sorry saga was revealed in the French edition of Closer.

It is of course the same French magazine that published those topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge so they are no strangers to controversy.

Julie Gayet is planning to sue the mag for breach of privacy but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, and Hollande perhaps recognises that as he has decided not to pursue legal action.

The beleaguered President found himself in the embarrassing position of being asked questions about his private life at a press conference earlier in the week that was supposed to be about the ailing French economy.

He refused to answer questions directly, stating only that “private matters should remain private” and that he was experiencing a “difficult moment”.

Can you imagine a British PM getting away with such behaviour? What if we’d known that John Major was having a fling with Edwina Currie (sorry to put that disturbing image in your head).

He’d never have been able to evade the press and I believe he’d have, quite rightly, been forced to resign. Apart from the lack of morals, this sort of behaviour can leave a senior politician open to all sorts of blackmail, and time taken up with a mistress should surely be used instead to try to do the job of running the country and making life better for the electorate, especially when there is a financial crisis.

No one is going to come out of this looking anything other than foolish and pathetic, particularly with revelations that the president hopped on a moped to visit his new lady love.

But Hollande will have to make a choice as there is an upcoming state visit to the USA at the start of February. The Yanks will take a very dim view of a president who has such an untidy love life and it has made him, and by association his country, look dithering, weak and unfit for purpose.