Sarkozy reaches new heights

You have to hand it to the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

He's not exactly subtle about adding a few centimetres (or inches if you like) to his height when he deems it necessary.

For the second time in almost as many weeks, the French media - all right then, some parts of it - have focused on Sarkozy's height to poke fun at him.

Mind you, he does rather make himself an easy target.

At the beginning of the month of course it was Sarkozy's visit to a Belgian factory that was the source of comment, when an employee admitted that she (and others) had been invited to share the stage with him based on their height; ie they were shorter than the French president who measures in at around 1.65 (or five foot five inches).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8243486.stm

And during his speech at the United Nations on Thursday, Sarkozy needed some more help as he was at the podium, as Yann Barthès the presenter on Le Petit Journal on Canal + was keen to point out.

While the US president, Barack Obama and Britain's prime minister Gordon Brown obviously didn't need to appear to be taller than they actually were (they're 1.85m and 1.80m respectively) the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev at 1.64 metres (and therefore shorter than his French counterpart) could have sought a little extra help on the podium.

Only he didn't.

But as you can see from the video, Sarkozy did; stepping up a couple of centimetres before speaking, and then down again at the end.



The wonders of stage management.

Sarkozy's D-Day diplomatic faux pas or outright snub to Queen?

June 6 marks the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

There'll be a special ceremony hosted by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with the guest of honour being his US counterpart, Barack Obama.

Not present however will be Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

She hasn't been officially "invited".

Over the past week sections of the British press have worked themselves into something of a tizzy over the lack of an invitation with the tabloids of course initially interpreting it as a "snub to the Queen"

The British monarch was reported to be "fuming", a claim later countered by Buckingham Palace officials and the British ambassador to France, Sir Peter Westmacott, who denied on French national radio speculation that the Queen was ""upset"".

After Luc Chatel, a spokesman for the French government, said the Queen would "naturally" be welcome as the British head of state, the tone in the media across the channel changed somewhat.

"French D-Day surrender: Sarkozy makes U-turn and says Queen IS welcome at 65th anniversary," ran the headline in the Daily Mail in an article insisting that the French had caved in to the apparent "fury" there had been back in Britain over the failure to issue an official invitation.

That probably wasn't quite what Chatel had meant as he had also made it clear that the ceremony on June 6 was primarily a Franco-American one and that it had been up to British and not French officials to decide who would represent their country.

In other words, the fault lay fairly and squarely with the British government and the prime minister, Gordon Brown, to whom the invitation had been extended in the first place.

And so the story rumbled on. Of course the Queen's diary is not exactly one which allows a great deal of flexibility, with reportedly up to six months needed to prepare for events abroad.

So with just days before the ceremony was due to take place it was unlikely that she would be able to attend.

But a last-minute solution has been found, in the form of Prince Charles, who is apparently due to attend instead.

So who's to blame for what has after all been rather a messy diplomatic mix-up?

Maybe the kindest explanation would be that it was a simple faux pas on the part of the French president and his advisors or at the very least a clumsy lack of communication between French and British officials.

Maybe the fault lies with Downing Street and the British government, with someone, somewhere not doing their job.

But somehow it's hard not to feel that France should have "known better".

The Queen is after all the only serving head of state to have actually served (as a mechanic) in the war.

And saying that the ceremony is "primarily a Franco-American one", would surely seem to be more than a little insulting to the memory of those British (and other nationalities) who played their part in the D-Day landings, as well as compounding an error that should never have occurred in the first place.

Perhaps when all is said and done, the British media wasn't so far off the mark and the whole sorry tale was indeed an outright snub on the part of Sarkozy, who - if one were feeling less than generous - could be seen as preferring and hoping to bask in the glory of playing host to the US president without a possible shadow being cast over him by the presence of the British monarch.