L'Escroc was on TV last night in a scripted "informal" Q&A session with 80 young people. I listened to a bit of it and I cannot say I was impressed. L'Escroc has a grandeur problem you see and seems to incapable, these days, of not appearing to be patronizing. Apparently in person he can be charming etc. etc. bt put him in front of a TV camera and he seems to slip back in to "Papa knows best" mode. I don't know how the majority of French people perceived his performance but going on some of the reactions at Yahoo France (machine translation), it wasn't the overwhelming success he needed.
The Wapping Liar has threeinterestingarticles on the show and the referendum in general. The third echoes a point that I made a couple of weeks ago - namely the curious absence of Sarko:
The knives are out in the Chirac camp, with the President’s allies accusing Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of his Union for a Popular Majority party, of deliberate lacklustre campaigning because a “no” would further his own ambition to replace M Chirac. The political heirs of the late General Charles de Gaulle are also feuding over which way their hero would have voted.