UNEDITED TELEVISION SCRIPT

“Aubry meets our readers,” is the front page headline in today’s Parisien / Aujourd’hui en France. The leader of the Socialist Party says a recent book claiming she was elected to her position thanks to vote rigging is full of lies. What’s more, she says that Ségolène Royal is aware of this. Royal, a fomer Presidential candidate has publicly asked Aubry to either sanction those responsible for the vote rigging or else pursue the authors of the book in the courts.

Aubry added that she would not take the authors of th Instead a debate or a showdown between the party and the authors of the book has been proposed to challege the book’s claims.

When asked if she herself would consider running for the Presidency in 2012, she said “I don’t shave in the morning – perhaps that’s why I don’t think about it! You’d have to be a man in order to think only about the Presidency.”

This is a reference to the numerous male Presidential hopefuls in the Socialist Party but also to Nicolas Sarkozy who first revealed he was interested in running for President when he said, “Yes sometimes I do think about it when I’m shaving!”

Egypt’s Culture Minister Farouk Hosni is on the front page of Libération with the headline, “L’homme qui veut brûler les livres” (The man who wants to burn books).

France is supporting his candidacy to head up UNESCO – the Paris-based UN agency for Education, Science and Culture. However Hosni has been accused of anti-Semitism. He once said he would “burn Hebrew books if I find them in Egyptian libraries.” Hosni has since said he regrets this and other statements.

France’s support appears to be part of a bargaining deal between Paris and Cairo over other diplomatic issues. The US has threatened to withhold funds from UNESCO if Hosni is appointed. Washington is the biggest contributor to UNESCO.

The deceased Queen Mother’s official biography is being published on the 17th September and Le Monde says it recounts the book love of all things French.

“She loved Charles de Gaulle and she adored the French people for their humour and joie de vivre, even if she wondered how you could trust them given their absence of feelings once it came to politics,” the book reveals.

During the Second World War, the then Queen addressed French women by radio, speaking of the “feelings of affection and admiration that their suffering and courage evokes.”

Charles de Gaulle told her that she and her husband were the only two people who showed true understanding and humanity to him during his exile in London.

The book notably speaks about the abdication of Edward VIII which saw her husband George VI rise to the throne. Elizabeth hated Edward’s wife, the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, for whom Edward abdicated. The Queen referred to Simpson as “that woman” and held her responsible for her own husband’s premature death at 56.