THE TELEGRAPH: France's fiercest and most popular satirist, who has become the scourge of President Nicolas Sarkozy and top politicians, has been fired from the country's leading current affairs radio programme, sparking cries of political censorship.
Two million listeners tuned into Stéphane Guillon's weekday 7.55am slots on France Inter, its equivalent of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, in which he has savaged public figures, both Left and Right for the past two and a half years.
Top political figures, including Mr Sarkozy, had been calling for his head for months, as they believe he has overstepped the mark between humour and insults. He says he has merely returned political satire to its rightful place in France, whose "bling" President he has thanked for single-handedly reviving the genre.
Mr Guillon's dismissal inevitably raised questions of political interference, as the head of Radio France – the public radio group running seven public stations – is directly nominated by Mr Sarkozy, and the head of France Inter is a friend of the President's wife.
It comes days after Mr Sarkozy summoned the editor-in-chief of Le Monde to the Elysée and reportedly threatened to remove state aid if he sold the prestigious newspaper to a group of Left-wing businessmen.
Jean-Luc Hees, the head of Radio France, announced yesterday that Mr Guillon would not be returning to the airwaves after the summer break. He said: "Humour must not be confiscated by little tyrants." Despite the huge audience figures, he said: "this comedy slot has been a failure" and was of "great intellectual poverty".
"If humour is reduced to insults, I cannot tolerate it for others, nor for myself," he said, saying Mr Guillon had "spat" on him in his sketches. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Wednesday, June 23, 2010
