Bertrand Delanoe's favorite dish is, apparently, a blanquette de veau, the creamy stew that is a staple of old-style French bistro cooking. It is the sort of dish that is served for cheap lunches in the cheaper cafes or occasionally, with some irony, in a good restaurant. The gastronomic historians who proliferate in France say the dish is associated with mothers placing steaming pots on checkered tablecloths, traditional family values, farmers returning from fields, a mythic vision of France of yesteryear. It is not necessarily what you would expect the solidly socialist gay mayor of France's capital, since 2001, to tuck into on his days off.
But that is the sort of counterintuitive double bluff that Delanoe excels at. The 57-year-old politician, who will be standing again for mayor at the end of his six-year mandate in March and has hopes to be the next French president if the left can shunt Sarkozy aside in 2012, is a difficult man to pin down. A brutally effective political instinct is concealed beneath his smooth, impeccably tailored exterior and charm. A vicious streak too lies alongside an argumentative affability. Principles lie alongside an impatience with ideological dogma. He is not particularly charismatic, but sees that as a virtue.
Last week was an eventful one for Delanoe. First, it was revealed that he is planning an autolib to supplement the highly successful free bicycle system, the velib introduced last year. Two thousand small cars will be available for short-term users from stands on street corners in the same way that bicycles in Paris are now. The velib has already provoked Europe-wide interest and the audacious new plan boosted a profile that was flagging internationally.
Then, jumping neatly from the municipal to the national, Segolene Royal, the defeated socialist candidate in last year's presidential elections, announced that she would take on Delanoe, a former ally, in a battle for the leadership of the Socialist party next year. If Delanoe wants to use his current post as a trampoline to the Elysee palace, as Jacques Chirac did, he needs to beat Royal first. The mayor of Paris never speaks openly about the presidency, but few doubt his ambition.
Delanoe, who lives in a large flat in the chic literary quarter, was born in Tunisia to French parents in 1950, the son of a conservative atheist surveyor father and a pious nurse mother. A solitary, dreaming, inattentive child, the experience of growing up in a country where religious communities from the three major monotheistic faiths lived in relative harmony marked him deeply, he has often said, adding that it was the sight of French troops violently repressing a local protest that first sent him towards the left.
His family returned to France when he was 14 and, based near the southern city of Rodez, he joined the Socialist party at the age of 21, starting his political career with the local party federations soon afterwards.
His first major break came when Francois Mitterand recognized his talent as a public speaker. The patronage of the leader of the French left helped the aspirant politician win a seat as a Paris city councilor in 1977 and then election to the National Assembly four years later as member for Montmartre. The young politician rose fast - perhaps too fast. "I wound people up," he later told an interviewer. The result was a period in the political wilderness, a job as a PR man and wealth. Delanoe, the grandson of sailors, bought himself a yacht.
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