And I’m not alone. One correspondent, TJ, tells me of her shame when her father “wore a brown 1970s tux to my graduation! With a ruffed shirt and everything!” Ha ha! Oh, the agony of it.
And this, from NS in Paris: “When I was President of France, my 81-year-old dad released a torrid autobiography detailing a lifetime of segxwal misadventures!” Ho! Ho! Well, who hasn’t had that happen to them from time to time?
Yes, this is Nicolas Sarkozy’s dad, Pál Sarkozy. He has recently released his memoir, “Tant de Vie” (which apparently is nothing to do with aunts but means “So Much Life”), and is making a concerted effort to be crowned Most Embarrassing Dad Ever.
Even knowing that your parents must have had sex at some stage (only once per child begotten, though, obviously) is enough to make you bite through your knuckle. But now Petit Nic must spend the rest of his life knowing that, at the tender age of 11, his old man got to third base* with his nanny.
You might think the Sarkozy family had had enough of public sex scandals of late, what with the French first couple’s recent (alleged) synchronised affairs. But Sarkozy Sr has other ideas. He tells of “finding peace with my body, my desire (briefly) appeased”. Apparently he “would every now and again let my weariness slide onto the body of women, pretty girls within reach of my desire,” which may be the most unsettling use of the verb “to slide” ever (and I hate to think what “weariness” is a euphemism for). He even makes a creepy comment about his son’s wife, calling Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (a successful woman in her 40s) an “adorable girl”.
It’s not the first political embarrassing-dad story. George Bush Sr fairly regularly embarrassed his son during the latter’s Presidency – by playing golf with Bill Clinton, memorably, but mainly just by being several times more urbane and well-spoken than the faux-cowboy Dubya. My colleague Boris Johnson’s dad Stanley occasionally pops up in the media looking exactly like Boris, and there’s nothing more embarrassing than visibly turning into your parents. Tony Benn called his son ‘Hilary’, which is frankly mean. But none of them are in the same embarrassment league as Père Sarko.
(In fact it’s embarrassing for the whole of France. You’d think they must be getting a bit sick of their First Family consistently living up to every single Gallic stereotype ever imagined. They may as well all wear strings of onions around their necks and surrender to the nearest German.)
Normally, the embarrassing things your dad does can be seen – in the calm light of adulthood – as sensible advice, or heartbreaking sentimentality. Mine made me tuck my trousers into my socks when I was cycling. It made me look ridiculous. I disobeyed him once (after I had left home), ruined an expensive pair of Levis and never did it again. A colleague groans as she recalls her father getting the camcorder out at every opportunity, but can you blame a father for wanting a record of his little girl as her fleeting childhood rushes by?
None of that with Sarko Sr; he’s just being a weird old man trying to convince everyone he used to be Casanova.
14_Inches
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