The Sun’s French invasion last Thursday was an undercover operation by two women, writes Jean Morgan.
PR manager Lorna Carmichael and feature writer Mel Hunter, fully signed-up members of the Wapping Underground, were waiting in a hotel near Paris’s OpŽra district for the “drop” at 4.30am.
Several thousand copies of The Sun carried an all-French wrap castigating President Chirac, characterised as a worm, for his anti-war stance.
Carmichael and Hunter were mobilised at 5am to deliver bundles of the paper to every TV and radio station in the French capital and to newsdesks of national newspapers. Then they tackled the French public, handing out Suns on the Champs ElysŽes and at the Eiffel Tower.
Before long, WH Smith’s Paris branch was sending messages that it was being inundated with calls from people trying to get hold of copies. By the end of Thursday the story of the Gallic Sun was on every French TV and radio station and on Friday morning in all the national newspapers.
The two infiltrators didn’t hang around after delivery. You don’t have to ask why when the full translation is decoded.
The Sun called Chirac a disgrace to Europe and asked French men and women if they were ashamed of him.
“We were chased across the city by the media but they didn’t catch us,” said Carmichael.
Jean Morgan
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