1 He’s pretty nippy in midfield – We’re talking football here, Macron is a lifelong supporter of Olympique Marseille, despite being from Amiens which is pretty much the opposite end of the country to Marseille (although this is not usual, Paris-Saint-Germain and Olympique Marseille have fans all over France).
He also plays, taking part in a charity football match in late 2021, where footage shows him taking a penalty. True to political form, his shot went straight down the centre to find the goal.
VIDEO Macron’s charity football game
2 He was actually only a banker for four years – One of the things that is often cited about Macron is that he’s a former investment banker – and it’s true he worked for the private Rothschild & Cie Banque between 2008 and 2012.
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But in his working life before becoming president at the age of 39, only four years were spent at the bank. The rest of his career was working as a technocrat and economic adviser, before taking up a role in François Hollande’s government in 2012.
3 He’s a bit of an anglophile – Undoubtedly a proud Frenchman, keen to restore France to glory on the world stage, Macron is also a fluent English-speaker and enjoys a bit of anglophone culture, according to his former PM Edouard Philippe, who revealed in his book that he and the president had discussed theories of power in relation to Star Wars and Game of Thrones.
Macron also has an English great-grandfather, although he never met him.
4 He is a (possibly erotic) novelist – Macron has often said that his first dream was to become a writer and it’s known that as a very young man he wrote a book telling the story of a young man falling in love.
Very few people claim to have actually read this so it’s not clear whether is merely a romance or something a little spicier. If he has written erotica it doesn’t make him unusual – it seems to be practically compulsory for French politicians.
5 He has blue eyes like a lake in the sunshine – Well, that’s according to his economy minister Bruno Le Maire, who described Macron as having “a blue gaze tinted by metallic sparkles, like a lake burdened with sunshine whose surface it would have been impossible, under the scintillating reflections, to pierce” in his most recent book.
He certainly has blue eyes and he also appears to have the politician’s trick of charming his audience, many people report being convinced and converted after a one-to-one meeting with the president.
And the thing that everyone ‘knows’
Macron has repeatedly paid tribute to the influence that his grandmother Manette, a teacher, had on his childhood.
But the other great influence on his life is another teacher, his wife Brigitte. The two have faced down decades of gossip, jokes and hostility due to their unconventional relationship with its 24-year age gap, which began when he was still at school and she was a teacher, married with teenage children.
But 26 years after meeting they are still together and after a rocky start Brigitte’s adult children from her first marriage now reportedly have a good relationship with the stepfather who is close to them in age. His stepchildren campaigned for him in 2017.
The couple have no children of their own, but have adopted a rescue dog – Nemo.
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His wife had an affair with her student – stop the whitewashing.
In most countries that’s a crime, not “unconventional”.
Utter nonsense. There was no “affair” when he was at school, no proof of any criminal conduct, despite several journalistic investigations, and then a number of books. It was a one-sided infatuation at that stage. She moved schools when she realised his attention was becoming the subject of rumours, and his parents then moved him to go to school in Paris, believing this to be a teenage fantasy that would disappear over time. She was married then, with three kids, but they kept in touch, and met openly when he was working, much later. The claim of “whitewashing” is often made, especially by his political opponents, but no friends, acquaintances, family or colleagues have ever hinted at anything untoward when he was at school, despite much encouragement to do so. Your claim is as baseless as it goes, and is entirely typical of the level of hostility they have met over the years since they married.
Mike, you are totally lost. I live in France and I’ve never heard anyone defend him like you are.
Macron’s parents asked her to stop contacting Emmanuel – she flat out refused. She refuses to say when their relationship became sexual – clearly something to hide.
The list goes on and on, but I’m talking with some troll. Anyone else: 2 minutes of research and you find a wealth of info on this.