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Defeated French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen disowned her own mother after she posed in a skimpy maid's outfit for Playboy.
The far-right politician, who yesterday was once again beaten to the top job by Emmanuel Macron, slammed her mum Pierrette Le Pen as a "public dump" after the racy images came to light.
Pierrette, the daughter of a wealthy wine merchant, married Marine's father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1960 – 12 years before he founded the far-right party which his daughter now represents.
Their marriage ended acrimoniously in 1987, a year when Jean-Marie was preparing his own presidential bid for the 1988 election.
He refused to pay alimony to Pierrette after the split, declaring in an interview with Playboy: "If she needs money, she only has to clean."
Reacting to this jibe, Pierrette went on to accept an offer from Playboy to pose in an undressed maid's outfit, pretending to do house work in the nude, for issue 23 of the French edition of the magazine.
Photographers from Playboy snapped Pierrette over two days in May 1987 in a secretive affair dubbed "Operation Good Mum".
Explaining her decision years later, Pierrette said: "I did not hesitate for a second, I said yes right away. Two days later, a team landed at my house in Quercy.
"Yes, I received money to do that. Nearly 400,000 francs. I had just bought the castle, it had to be maintained."
The edition proved so popular that, even after Playboy initially printed 100,000 extra copies in anticipation, a second printing of 150,000 copies was required to satisfy demand.
The prank also did Jean-Marie no favours in his electoral campaign.
He and his National Front party (now renamed National Rally) received a mere 14.39% of the first round votes, meaning that he didn't make it through to the second round.
A poll launched after the images were released revealed that, despite the majority of French people agreeing that "she was wrong" to do the photoshoot, 87% of them still found it "funny".
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Reacting to the scandal at the time, Marine declared that Pierrette was no longer her mother.
She said: "Today, after these photos, we can no longer consider her as our mother.
"It's worse than really losing her, a mother is part of a secret garden, not a public dump."
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- Playboy
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