The odd ménage of François Mitterand

In his Daily Telegraph column, Charles Moore tells the story of Franois Mitterand's love life while he was president of France. Mitterand, says Moore, was the last man who could "fill the role" of his country's strange elective monarchy. His current successor "wears his robes like a dwarfish thief".

Mitterand's domestic arrangements (detailed in a new book by Philip Short

) were certainly odd. Before the presidential election of 1981, he had a house in the rue de Bivre, where he lived with his wife, though spending much of his time with his much younger mistress, Anne, who lived five minutes away.

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On becoming president, he moved into the lyse Palace, though not to sleep, spending the nights with Anne, who was given a grace-and-favour residence on the quai Branly. A 36-man Special Group for the Protection of the President, says Moore, was "paid for by the unwitting taxpayer" to fund these arrangements.

"When a writer called Halier tried to publish a fictionalised version of Mitterand's set-up, the president's anti-terrorist cell' set about harassing him, slashing his tyres, making silent telephone calls in the middle of the night, and following him. Very little of this was known to the French public." Nor, until now, to almost anyone else.

Sad old tree grumbles about taxes

Now he's grumbling in a different vein. He's a neighbour of the novelist and journalist AN Wilson, who, in the FT, describes a recent visit from the great man. "Dr Jonathan, looking like a sad old tree, stands and asks whether we'll all be here this time next year. He's not, as I at first supposed, thinking of the Grim Reaper, but of that equally ghoulish figure Vince Cable and his proposed mansion tax'. Jonathan wonders whether those of us who are cash-poor but live in valuable houses will be forced to move."

Wilson says he'd "half expected Jonathan to support this tax". Me too. I've no idea whether he still thinks Britain "an ugly, racist, rancorous little place" but he seems quite attached to his London house.

Valerie's blinding defence

The hospital gambit is brilliant for all sorts of reasons, among them the fact that it suggests "intolerable suffering, stoically borne" and "makes the errant chap seem a complete rat. (Look! He's made me ill!)"

And if the rotter fails to turn up at the clinic, "clutching a vast, apologetic bouquet, you can issue a dignified statement, just like Trierweiler's, saying that your doctors have banned you from seeing him".

Tabloid money: Why Ed Balls should study boxing

"Figures released in Dublin reveal that in 2003 he paid €14m (£11.6m) in income tax. Much more than Ryanair paid in corporate tax, apparently... O'Leary, 52, is worth about £300m."

"Did you see the painting of Labour MP Diane Abbott, which had been commissioned for the House of Commons and paid for by you and me?" asks Rod Liddle in The Sun.

"Gordon Bennett, what a shocker. She looks miserable in the painting, standing there apparently starkers and on the cusp of saying something extremely stupid. And it cost the taxpayer £11,750. Terrific, I'll have two please. They'll come in useful at Halloween. Some £250,000 has been spent on portraits of such mind-blowingly eminent international statesmen and women as Iain Duncan Smith, Ken Clarke and, of course, Diane. Just painting one of Diane's chins would cost enough to keep a family clothed and fed for half a year. One MP described the amount spent as chicken-feed'. They still don't get it, do they?"

Why does Ed Balls attract so many threats of violence? asks Ephraim Hardcastle in The Daily Mail. "He has come close to fisticuffs with fellow Labour frontbencher Douglas Alexander. Deputy premier Nick Clegg says he fancies his own chances in a kick-boxing fight against Balls. Labour veteran Jack Straw reportedly threatened in 2008 to punch Ed's lights out' during a row. Perhaps it's boxing, not pianoforte, Ed should study."

French tax exile Grard Depardieu has opened a wine shop in Belgium, says Hickey in The Daily Express. La Cave de Grard stocks wines by celebrity vinters. Apart from Depardieu's own vintages, customers can buy bottles from vineyards owned by Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and French rocker Johnny Hallyday.