BOB'S BANTER

Hello, shorty!

Robert Clements

French President Sarkozy, sources say, is livid! He's never been too happy with comments made about his height, for that matter who is?

"…Be like Madame Bruni, take a smaller model."

French advertisement for Citroen C3 hatchback

"I mean it's not my fault is it if I'm short?"

"No, Mr President, it isn't!"

"And despite that a woman five inches taller fell for me!"

"That's true, Mr President!'

"Despite my height I was elected President of France!"

"Of course, Mr President!"

"So my height doesn't bother me, do you understand?"

"About that Citroen ad, Mr President?"

"You idiot! Stupid nincompoop!"

Well, well, so his height does bother him doesn't it? Poor man, he's going to spend the rest of his life trying to show the world he can do all the things tall men do and do foolish things to prove his point; his first I believe, in divorcing his first wife and marrying Bruni, to show the world he was capable of getting a beautiful model!

"Mr President!"

"Yeah what is it?"

"There was a short man who lived 2000 years ago who felt like you!"

"Who's that?"

"Zacheus!"

"Was he a President?"

"No, a tax collector, and a very powerful man, who persecuted and humiliated his people because he was…"

"Short! Yeah I know that feeling, you think the whole world is laughing at you, so you want to prove that you are bigger than them!"

"Right you are, Mr President!"

"So what did he do?"

"He heard one day that Jesus was in town and climbed onto a Sycamore tree for he wanted to see and hear him speak, and when he had heard the Lord speak, he climbed down from the tree…"

"And taxed the people again, ha, ha, ha?"

"No, Mr President, he returned with interest all the extra money he had taken from the people and he called the Lord into his house for tea!"

"Wh…what did the Lord do to him?"

"Ah Mr President, Zacheus was told that how he was outside; short or fat, ugly or handicapped didn't matter, what mattered was how big he was inside, and he decided to accept the Lord's teachings and become a huge man inside, and he did Sarkozy, he did!"

Robert Clements is a journalist and newspaper columnist. His daily humour column Bob’s Banter is published in over 30 newspapers and magazines in nearly every state in India, as well as in the top newspapers of Bangladesh, Dubai and Pakistan and is also translated into Hindi. He has a daily readership of an estimated 6 million readers.