Sarkozy 'get lost' video becomes Internet hit

The video, posted on a newspaper's website on Sunday, was reportedly viewed by 3,50,000 people. The president was filmed by a scribe from a daily at the annual farm fair in Paris.

A video of French President Nicolas Sarkozy telling a bystander to "get lost" has become a hit on the Internet.

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Sarkozy was filmed by a journalist from the daily Le Parisien on a walkabout at the annual farm fair in Paris on Saturday.

Sarkozy offered his hand to a man who said: "Don't touch me, you are soiling me." In reply, Sarkozy said, without dropping his smile: "Get lost, dumb ass."

The video was posted on Le Parisien's website www.leparisien.fr.on and by midday on Sunday it had been seen by more than 350,000 people, a spokeswoman for the newspaper said.

"It has created quite a controversy," she said. The video is the first to come up when searching for Sarkozy on Dailymotion and YouTube.

Sarkozy's popularity ratings are in freefall and his hands-on style of government is attracting growing criticism.

In November, Sarkozy had a heated exchange with fishermen during protests against rising fuel costs. The president challenged a fisherman who had insulted him.

After the incident, Sarkozy said he refused to have insults hurled at him and would only accept a dialogue between "civilised people."

Francois Hollande, head of the Socialist party, said Sarkozy was not behaving like a head of state and called on him to improve his behaviour.

"One should not get into a brawl...One does not call down a fisherman or a worker to explain what he said, one does not get into a fight with someone who does not want to shake your hand," Hollande said on pay-TV channel Canal plus.

Sarkozy's spokesman, David Martinon, declined to comment on the fair incident.

The number of people satisfied with the president fell 9 percentage points in a month to 38 percent, according to an Ifop poll in the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche.

(Editing by Robert Woodward)