Five things you may not know about Jacques Chirac

Tributes have been paid to the former French president Jacques Chirac following his death on Thursday at the age of 86.

Chirac was a leading champion of the European Union, who took France into the single European currency and famously kept his country out of the war in Iraq in 2003.

Current French President Emmanuel Macron said Chirac was a “great Frenchman”, calling him a president who “embodied a certain idea of France”.

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Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said she was “very sad” to hear about the death of Chirac, describing him as an “outstanding partner and friend” to her nation.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission and former Luxembourg prime minister, said he was “moved and devastated” to learn of the Frenchman’s passing.

The illuminations on the Eiffel Tower were switched off two hours earlier than usual in honour of Chirac and a national day of mourning will take place on Monday.

The BBC describes Chirac, who served two terms as president and twice as prime minister, as a “towering figure in French politics for five decades”, but someone who ended his political career ignominiouisly, being convicted of diverting public funds and abusing public confidence in 2011.

Here are five things you may not know about him.

He loved snails, sauerkraut and Mexican beer

Chirac was an unabashed gourmand, and The Guardian says his “gargantuan appetite for Mexican beer and rillettes (pork) sandwiches” made him liked, even by his enemies. The LA Times says he enjoyed “hearty peasant dishes”. Bernard Vaussion, the head chef who cooked for French presidents for nearly 40 years, said Chirac enjoyed snails and sauerkraut.

But he was no fan of British food

In 2005, the Telegraph reported Chirac as saying of the British: “The only thing they have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow [disease]. You can’t trust people who cook as badly as that. After Finland, it’s the country with the worst food.”

He was the first French leader to acknowledge the country’s role in the Holocaust

Chirac was France’s final leader with direct memories of the Second World War and he was frank about the nation’s role in its worst atrocity. “Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state,” he said in 1995. “France, the land of the Enlightenment and human rights… delivered those it protects to their executioners.” With these words he “crushed the myth of his nation’s innocence in the persecution of Jews”, says The Independent.

He asked if “housewife” Thatcher wanted his balls

Following a testy EU 1988 summit in Brussels, and thinking that his microphone had been switched off, Chirac said of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher: “What more does this housewife want from me? My balls on a plate?”

His staff said he lacked stamina

Chirac was widely regarded as a womaniser and philanderer, despite his long marriage to wife Bernadette. However, his office staff had a less than flattering nickname for him in this regard, dubbing him: “Mr Three Minutes, Shower Included”, according to a book published by his chauffeur.

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