It takes a lot for the French to lose patience with their ageing stars, and Brigitte Bardot, now an unabashed fan of the far-right National Front leader, Jean-Marie le Pen, was given a lot of rope.
Last Wednesday the free ride for her tirades against the decadence of modern society ended after two anti-racist and human rights movements announced they would take the 68-year-old to court.
Her latest outburst, a book called Un Cri Dans Le Silence, attacks Islam, gays, the unemployed, teachers and illegal immigrants, and calls for a return of the guillotine.
She says that gays are fairground freaks, teachers arrive at work with greasy hair wearing disgusting jeans and muddy trainers, and that ”the professional unemployed” don’t even want to work illegally.
Bardot rails against what she claims is the ”Islamisation of France”, and after a lifelong campaign against the death penalty, she says the guillotine should be brought back for child-killers.
The Movement against Racism and For the Friendship of Peoples (MRAP) and the League of Human Rights said they would sue Bardot. MRAP president Mouloud Aounit said: ”We expect justice to hit her hard. We need a ruling which will dissuade and prevent her from making further outbursts.”
The former film star said it had been her intention to shock by ”saying out loud what people think to themselves” — a phrase invented by Le Pen. — Â