Eric Zemmour, the French Right-wing populist pundit who crashed out of parliamentary elections this month has reportedly been left red-faced again after the Ritz Paris banned him from its swimming pool for inappropriate behaviour.
Le Canard Enchaîné reported that the Ritz declined the renewal of his subscription to the swimming pool – the largest of all of the Parisian hotel “palaces” – after receiving a complaint from an American female customer who Mr Zemmour “rudely told off” for using the same lane as him.
After reportedly receiving an official warning from the spa director, other clients then complained about his lowbrow “pool boy pranks”.
According to Le Canard, Ritz management has decided not to renew the subscription when his current one expires next month. Mr Zemmour has been a member since the summer of 2020 and can often be seen doing lengths at 7.30am, it said.
During the presidential campaign, Mr Zemmour told Paris Match that he enjoyed morning swims in a “simple municipal pool”. An annual subscription for use of the Ritz’s is €5,500 (£4,730) on weekdays with the seven-day-per-week formula costing €7,000.
The Ritz declined to comment and Mr Zemmour denied any such incident took place, calling it a “fib”.
This is reportedly not Mr Zemmour’s first run-in with a plush swimming pool.
According to l’Express he was blackballed in 2019 from the “piscine” of the prestigious Cercle de l’Union interallié – a private social and dining club whose members include political figures and royalty and which adjoins the British Embassy in Paris – after complaints that he was “proselytising in the changing rooms”.
Mr Zemmour, 63, dire warnings against the perils of Islam and the impending “great replacement” of indigenous French by mainly Muslim foreigners helped propel him in opinion polls late last year.
However, he ended up being eliminated in round one of the presidential elections in April on around seven per cent. He was then knocked out in the first round of legislative elections in Saint-Tropez on the Riviera and his Reconquest! party failed to win a single parliamentary seat.
Some of his demoralised troops are reportedly now deserting to the camp of rival nationalist Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally won 89 seats and is now boasts the biggest single parliamentary opposition group. A politburo meeting this week reportedly almost ended in a fist-fight when members criticised his “autocratic” style and he complained “the working classes are illiterate”.
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