Gaffe-prone French politician Georges Frêche set for silver screen

A film about the life of the scandal-prone French politician Georges Frêche is to hit the silver screen next week. Known for his inflammatory remarks, the mayor of Montpellier was expelled from the French Socialist Party three years before his death.

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Film director Yves Jeuland trailed Frêche for six months, filming him on stage and behind the scenes.

His film The President shows the renegade Socialist joking with the press, slamming fellow politicians and chanting with pieds noirs, French citizens who fled Algeria after independence.

Frêche's gaffes and inflammatory remarks often hit the headlines in France. The Socialist Party expelled him in 2007.

He once described current President Nicolas Sarkozy as an arrogant pansy in Cuban heels. In 2006, he said there were too many black players in the French football team.

At the start of this year, he made a joke which was interpreted as anti-Semitic about former prime minister Laurent Fabius.

Though he was excluded from the Socialist Party in 2007, Frêche was popular in south-west France. He was mayor of Montpellier from 1977 to 2002. Chairman of Languedoc-Roussillon regional council since 2002, he was reelected with a wide margin in March 2010 despite a bid from another candidate from the Socialist Party.

Frêche once said he wanted to die "on stage, like Molière". He died working in his office at the Languedoc-Roussillon regional council seat but his thespian aspirations now look set to be realised posthumously.