Forget the sex scandal. Why does Francois Hollande have only one pair of shoes? 

Of all the interesting revelations by the French magazine Closer about François Hollande, the most interesting for me is its claim that he owns only one pair of shoes. I don’t think I know anybody with only one pair of shoes. Even my brother John, who at the age of 86 has rather let himself go sartorially-speaking, possesses two pairs. Yet if Closer is to be believed, the President of France has only one pair. The president’s shoes are important because when he arrived from the Elysée Palace on the back of a moped for a visit to his alleged mistress in a nearby apartment, his face was hidden by a safety helmet. So Closer, which secretly photographed his arrival, had to rely on his shoes to confirm his identity. They were, it said, the same shoes he had worn on an earlier visit to Saudi Arabia; and they were, it added, his only ones.