Forget perfume, fashion and top-class footballers, France's most popular export is soap opera Plus Belle La Vie. It is so beloved that one of its most famous viewers, the humourless ex-tennis star Justine Henin, happily ridiculed herself by appearing in it. Appropriately enough it is set in Marseille, a city whose football club probably boasts still more plotlines than the series, and where everyday reality is often stranger than fiction.

Having said that, things have been relatively calm ...

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