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Pensioner plagued by media after presidential candidate's gaffe

A French pensioner has been deluged with requests for her opinion on French politics since the name her phone number is registered under was mentioned in a national newspaper. To make matters worse, the name cited by would-be Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande is not even hers.

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The 73-year-old Mme Moulin has had to disconnect her phone at night after receiving over 100 calls for a certain Mme Dugenou. The name has been wrongly attributed to her number since 2009 when she tried to go ex-directory, she says.

The world wants to know what she thinks of the French presidential race because Hollande, who hopes to be the Socialist candidate in 2012, told a journalist, “My role at the moment is to convince Mme Dugenou.”

Hollande wasn't being personal. 

In fact, he claimed, he was quoting Nicolas Sarkozy. 

The President of the Republic recently sneered that he was talking to Barack Obama while the Socialist hopeful was talking to “Mme Dugenou”, Hollande told Le Parisien newspaper.

The name literally means Mrs Of-the-knee but the politicians were using it as a sort of French – and female - version of the British “Fred Bloggs” or the American “Joe Schmoe”.

Hollande hoped to boost his man-of-the-people credentials by turning Sarkozy’s alleged boast back on him.

But he has inadvertently caused Mme Moulin, who lives in the eastern Vosges region, great inconvenience.

Far from being an average French name, Mme Dugenou can only be found once in the telephone directory – and that’s a mistake.

“Mme Dugenou doesn’t exist! I’ve had enough of this! It’s completely stupid!” Mme Moulin told the AFP news agency.

And her political analysis?

She doesn’t find François Hollande a very convincing candidate, she says.

“For me politics is what I have in my purse. I just see if it is empty or full.”
 

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