This year, Bernadette Chirac has probably passed New Year’s Eve with his loved ones, and in particular with his daughter, Claude Chirac. Mother and daughter may have reminisced about good family memories. But one thing is certain, end of year celebrations 1975 will not be part of it. For Bernadette Chirac, the magic of Christmas vanished that year.Galalooks back on this episode in his life. At the end of December 1975, Jacques Chirac, then Prime Minister, tried to play it nice so as not to arouse the suspicions of his wife. Bernadette Chirac’s husband, reputed to be unfaithful, decides to take the plane to Guyana, then Guadeloupe, under the pretext of visiting the inhabitants of the two islands. “ Around Jacques Chirac, there were many journalists, and all journalists protected Jacques Chirac in relation to the affair he was supposed to have with one of the journalists who were there ”, explains Jacques Toubon, former advisor to Jacques Chirac, to our colleagues from France 2 in 2019. A few thousand kilometers away, Bernadette Chirac is spending the holidays alone with her two daughters.
This journalist is Jacqueline Chabridon, journalist at Le Figaro. Their affair began in 1974. Jacques Chirac fell under the spell of the reporter responsible for taking his portrait for the newspaper. “It all started when Jacques Chirac stopped at a restaurant to taste his traditional calf’s head, and he challenged her toswallow a calf’s head like himwhich she hastens to do”, says Laureline Dupont, author of Jacques and Jacqueline,in the documentary “Bernadette and Jacques, the inseparable ones” broadcast on BFMTV in 2019. The same evening, the two lovers dine together.
> Discover in images the evolution of the former first lady and wife of Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac’s spoiled mistress, Bernadette neglected
In love with Jacqueline Chabridon, Jacques Chirac takes great care of his mistress, abandoning his wife. “He was capable of Write poems inflamedto open the store Pierre Cardin to give her a sweater when she was cold one evening. Outbursts of the heart that he no longer had for his wife”, ensures Erwan L’Éléouet, author of Bernadette Chirac, the secrets of a conquest, on BFMTV. However, Jacques Chirac never expressed the wish to divorce. “He has both the sense of duty anchored to the bodysense of state and immense ambition”,comments Béatrice Gurrey, author ofChirac. The relationship between Jacques Chirac and Jacqueline Chabridon lasted two years. A year after their breakup, the journalist tries to suicideno longer supporting their separation.
Photo credits: JACOVIDES-MOREAU / BESTIMAGE