Taki: Come on then Saatchi, name a time and place. I'm serious, are you?

OK, folks. We’ve had enough of Hollande and his rather silly antics, although I do understand the man. Ever younger is not a bad policy, in sport as well as in sexual matters, but it does give off a certain bad smell (it’s called a Saatchi) and is something real men actually never get caught doing. Seducers have been the whipping boys in books, plays, poems and in films from time immemorial, starting with Paris of Troy. Someone called it the most ‘unspeakable type of masculinity’, a bit harsh, I agree, but there are some chaps out there whose only goals are conquest and belt notches. Although highly ridiculous — and it was funny hearing Hollande called ridiculous by another slightly comical figure, Sarkozy — a reptilian smoothie Hollande is not. Although Dante put the seducer in the eighth circle of hell, I think the Florentine great does seducers a disservice. Cold, calculating sexual profiteers all seducers are not. Some are even nice guys who love women and do not seek their destruction. Take the case of Casanova, for example.

He not only admired and respected women, he also made their happiness his life’s work. ‘He undressed them as if they were his superiors,’ wrote one of his biographers. If Hollande put on some 40lbs and grew his hair to his shoulders, he could pose as the real Casanova, because Giacomo was no looker. He never ruined a woman and if anything he was a fool for love. Dado Ruspoli, another great seducer, but the best-looking man in Rome, treated his numerous mistresses with respect and courtesy, and like another Roman noble, Roffredo Gaetani, could love deeply. Both Dado and Roffredo were great friends of mine, and I never saw them once abuse or speak ill of a woman. (Mind you, they might have been cowardly because they never grabbed a woman by the throat like some heroic types tend to do.)