AP Photo

Maurice Taylor, chief executive of the Titan tyre company, first came to public attention in the US in 1996 when he ran, or rather stumbled, for the presidency. He spent a lot of his own money to earn about 1 per cent of the vote in the Republican primaries he entered, and published a manifesto of sorts entitled Kill All the Lawyers and Other Ways to Fix the Government. It is clear that he has a 19th-hole ideology, and a sense of humour to match. The French have, perhaps to their credit, failed to see the joke in his tirade against their workers, trade unions, government and pretty much everyone else in the hexagon.