In the White House, the new French president faces the press alongside Barack Obama. Monsieur Francois Hollande is dumpy and speccy compared to the iced-coffee elegance of his host. Although Obama stumbles over his visitor’s name (hesitates, then over-frenchifies it), it is Hollande who is somehow in the wrong. Instead of simply being the President of France on his first visit to Washington, he is also thinking that he is the President of France on his first visit to Washington; that kind of thinking which is one step removed from being there, doing it. Hollande only has to sit still while Obama introduces him to the Washington press corps. Naturally, Obama followed the ‘remarkable’ election in which Hollande ousted Sarkozy. Of course, having read his biography, Obama knows that as a young man Hollande spent time in America studying fast food. Meanwhile we can see the President of France wriggling in and out of his own skin: one moment inside himself; next second, beside himself. At the end, he chips in with a line about French fries and you only wish he hadn’t.