PARIS: The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has recounted how he asked the Queen during a state banquet at Windsor Castle if she ever got bored, to which she replied: ''Yes, but I don't say so''.
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The President, who is teetotal, said he plucked up the courage to ask the question after mistaking a gin and tonic for a glass of water during his state visit to Britain in March 2008.
Mr Sarkozy admitted to being overawed by the lavish royal welcome laid on for him and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, on their first state visit. They had married the previous month.
Discussing the visit during a swearing-in ceremony for a new member of France's Constitutional Council at the Elysee Palace last month, Mr Sarkozy said: ''[For] this first trip with Carlita, we were both a bit tense''.
At the state banquet, attended by 160 guests in St George's Hall at Windsor, he was seated next to the Queen. Mr Sarkozy said: ''I was very thirsty. I took a glass. I thought it was water, but it was gin. ''You know I haven't drunk [alcohol] in 40 years.''
The effect was immediate. ''It was when I asked the Queen whether she ever got bored and she replied, 'Yes, but I don't say so' that I understood I'd been drinking,'' he said.
During his dinner speech he waved his arms about so wildly that his wife later admitted being terrified he would knock over a priceless vase.
The President recounted his gin-fuelled royal chat while swearing in Claire Bazy-Malaurie, a state audit official, to France's highest constitutional body, according to the weekly magazine L'Express.
The Sarkozys' visit to Britain was considered a success.
A spokesman for Buckingham Palace said: ''We never comment on private conversations.''
Telegraph, London
