FRENCH NICKERS

IT IS NOT ONLY OCTAVE MIRBEAU, with his “Diary of a Chambermaid”, and the myriad French writers and filmmakers who since the days of this pervert have written about and/or filmed the dream-cum-fantasy of the chambermaid who surprises us in our hotel bedrooms by opening the door with a pass key, apologises and then says to us, preferably in a French accent, “I have come to turn down the bedclothes, monsieur”, that arouses a certain je me amuse of curiosity in our lower members. It is also the power of knowing we can get away with it.

YET CONTRARILY, DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KHAN, the French President of the International Monetary Fund, is now more a victim of erotic fantasies vis-à-vis femmes de chambre that have led him, once again, but this time in a country with a proper legal system, to interfere physically with a chambermaid simply because he can due to his enormous wealth, individual power and protection behind the obscene system of French law which protects VIPs because they are VIPs. In France he would be absolved of rape just by stating that the maid was in maid’s uniform, this being tantamount to incitement to rape in the eyes of any French judge.

ON BEING DRAGGED OFF A PLANE about to take off from JFK New York to France, Strauss-Khan allegedly stated, “You can’t arrest me. I’m a VIP.” Mr Strauss-Khan is about to see how the law is equal for everyone in the United States of America. Now he has been refused bail, we will soon be able to hear about the many cases of “similar assaults” carried out "on at least one other occasion".

THE NOW UNAVOIDABLE PRISON SENTENCE for this overblown, arrogant buffoon will be a matter of tabloid and rolling news matter over the coming months. Perhaps we might feel sorry for his four children and his wife; we might wonder whether someone who pays $3,000 per night at a hotel needs to rape a chambermaid. Whatever. Or we might want to think about the lady involved, whom he "sexually assaulted and attempted to forcibly rape", and "when he was unsuccessful, he forced her to perform oral sex on him.”

My picture shows Mr Strauss-Khan, the gentleman in charge of the International Monetary Fund and its programme to solve the world’s economic problems. Until today over thirty countries depended upon his signature for them to be able to start their economies afresh. Many of these countries are desperate for help.