The Dakar rally, the former beauty queen and French TV

What happens when two French institutions "meet"?

Easy. You get one - a former Miss France - commentating on another - the Paris-Dakar.

And all hell has been let loose among sports journalists miffed, thinking that they've been passed over for the job.

Screenshot from official promo video, Dakar 2011

That annual real life version of the television cartoon Wacky Races - aka The Dakar (formerly Paris-Dakar) - hasn't yet got underway, but already it's providing plenty of what the French seem to love so much, "polemic".

At the heart of the furore is a former beauty queen, Élodie Gossuin, Miss France 2001 and Miss Europe in the same year.

No the 30-year-old is not going to don a helmet rather than a coronet.

Instead the powers that be at France Television have decided that she should join the commentary team during the Rally which begins on January 1; an appointment that certainly hasn't been to everyone's liking.

So much so that it quickly became apparent that all was not well among sports journalists at France Television and initial reports after the announcement was made suggested that five of them belonging to la société des journalistes du service des sports, or the sports desk if you will, along with their president, Nicolas Vinoy, and spokesman Gérard Holtz, had resigned in protest.

"The position of consultant during the Paris-Dakar was a coveted one," it was reported.

It wasn't apparently Gossuin per se to whom they objected but the way her appointment had been made.

As it turned out, only Vinoy had handed in his notice and that was "nothing to do with the arrival of Gossuin," according to Daniel Bilalian, the director of sports at France Television, suggesting that there were other problems among the team that had been "brought to a head" by the appointment.

"Élodie Gossuin has already participated in Andros Trophy (the French national ice racing championships) and she's familiar with motorsports," he said.

"She's welcome to the team covering the Dakar, and I wanted her to be a part of it."

With Gossuin the subject of both the sports and celebrity pages of newspapers, it wasn't long of course before journalists turned their attention to how she felt about the "polemic" (yes there's that word again).

"It has been very unpleasant and I wish it had happened differently," she told Europe 1 national radio.

"These are internal problems that don't concern me," she added.

"I have no pretensions of wanting to call myself a journalist, I'm just going to be a consultant."

And that means, according to Holtz, who is also one of the race commentators, "adding colour" to the event by "spending time with doctors and cooks" rather than reporting directly on the rally itself; for which even she admits she isn't qualified.

This year's Dakar begins on January 1 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and if it is nearly half as lively as the pre-rally build-up has been so far, it should be more than entertaining.

Hijo, the dog who went missing during a Paris stopover

Lost luggage is one thing, but imagine how difficult it must be, in spite of all the regulations and procedures in place, for an airline to lose man's best friend and the sheer desperation owners must feel when they're told their dog has gone missing.

Sleeping at an airport might not be everyone's idea of time well spent, but a Lebanese-Spanish couple did just that last week as they waited for news on the disappearance of their dog.

Their enforced stopover began last Wednesday when they arrived on an Air France flight from Beirut in transit for the Chilean capital of Santiago.

That's when they discovered that their boxer dog "Hijo" (or "son" in Spanish) who had made the journey with them, albeit as “accompanied baggage” in the cargo hold, was missing.

According to the airline, there had been something wrong with a handle on the transportation kennel and Hijo had escaped from it after the 'plane landed.

But as far as his owner Alain Daou was concerned, the baggage handlers (and as a consequence the airline) had somehow been at fault.

"The cage was brand new," he said. "They must have dropped it."

Air France apparently offered the couple, who were without visas and for obvious reasons didn't want to leave for Chile until Hijo had been found, one night at a hotel.

But that was the extent of their responsibility, according to Daou, who had less than kind words about what had happened.

"The airline did nothing during those three days," he said. "As far as it was concerned our dog was simply a piece of luggage."

Although the story ended well, the couple surely deserves sympathy for having spent so long at an airport which a poll back in June revealed was far from being a joy for any traveller.

Published by the independent Canadian-based website sleepingairports.net. the poll ranked the airport as the world's worst, and the comments made by those who had voted for (or should that be against?) it, had more than a ring of the familiar about them to anyone who has had the displeasure of passing through the French capital's main airport.

According to statistics released in March by the airline watchdog, the Air Transport Users Council (AUC), losing luggage happens with frightening regularity.

"Airlines mishandled 42 million bags worldwide in 2007," said the AUC, "Compared with 34 million in 2006 and 30 million in 2005."

As if you needed telling, that's an awful lot of disgruntled passengers. But there was worse.

"Of the 42 million mishandled in 2007, 1.2 million bags, or around one bag for every 2,000 passengers, were irretrievably lost."

And the inconvenience of arriving at a destination while the luggage failed to make the same journey, hit this particular traveller hard earlier this year when he touched down in New York with just his carry-on after a flight from Paris.