Playing away from home - c'est normale!

The International Monetary Fund chief and former French finance minister, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has apologised for "an incident concerning me and a staff member". The French press has dubbed DSK's sexual misbehaviour with Hungarian former IMF employee Piroska Nagy a "crac-crac". Making crac-crac is slang which means playing away from home. But the fuss over DSK's indiscretion is making some French people wonder if the rules of crac-crac are changing.

DSK, 59, still known as "un grand séducteur", is not the most popular man in France now. Sarkozy is said to be furious with him. His liaison is being called an "abuse of power" because he allegedly helped Nagy get a new job in London, although he denies giving her any preferential treatment.

The scandal has gone so far that DSK's distinguished wife, Anne Sinclair, a journalist who is the French equivalent of Anna Ford, has had to post an announcement on her website saying that the Nagy affair was a "one-night stand" and the couple have since got over it.

Sinclair's response is typical of a sophisticated Frenchwoman. It's vastly different from Hillary Clinton's public long face after Bill dallied with Monica. Still, people are worried.

"God, I hope we are not becoming Puritans like the Americans," moaned my friend Alix. Remember, this is a country where former President Mitterrand had many mistresses, and a secret love child. Jacques Chirac and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing were also reportedly big studs. In America, sex scandals are more shameful think Clinton. In Britain, it's usually kinkier: French friends still ask with bewilderment about the death of Stephen Milligan MP, found hanged in women's underwear in 1994.

But, until now, the French have been more relaxed. "Sexual promiscuity within a French marriage is like getting a coffee in the morning," one friend confided to me. Yet Sarkozy, regarded as a serial philanderer before Carla got her claws into him (rumour is his eye is already wandering), is acting like a baptist minister. Since when did family values matter to the Elysée Palace?

To me, it is hypocritical. I don't care that DSK had a mistress. As for abusing his power, I hate to sound cynical but it happens all the time. In a world turned grim by financial crisis, a little crac-crac never hurt anyone. Give the old seducer a break.