“I got into the habit of paying for boys...All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously."

Not my words, nor my interest, but those of Frédéric Mitterrand France’s culture minister. What is odd is that he made these remarks and more in a book published in his 2005 autobiography "The Bad Life" but only now is he getting any degree of grief.

"I got into the habit of paying for boys...All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously."

"One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint but it pleases me beyond the reasonable."

No wonder Frédéric Mitterrand has emerged as one of the most vociferous defenders of Roman Polanski.