Muammar Gaddafi — ridiculed, vilified, accused of lacking a moral compass in foreign policy ... No wait! That's not Colonel Gaddafi we were thinking of, it was President Sarkozy of France, who this week has been playing host to Libya's leader in the manner of a nephew bending over backwards to indulge an old, rich uncle in whose will he soon hopes to figure prominently.

Invited for two days, and lingering for five, an unshaven and scruffily sweatshirted Colonel Gaddafi and his 400-strong entourage criss-crossed Paris in a motorcade led by a white limousine so stretched that its bonnet and boot were in differerent timezones. He pitched a big Beduin tent by the Elysée Palace. He asked to go fox-hunting, but settled for a pheasant shoot at Versailles. And, in a triumph of audacity over irony, he reprimanded his hosts on their human rights record.

While the rest of France swiftly tired of their boorishly behaved guest — deploying those hints that people drop when a dinner guest outstays his welcome, such as snuffing out the candles, stacking the dishwasher, preparing the children's packed lunches for the next schoolday, changing into pyjamas, and so on, Mr Sarkozy behaved like an impeccable host by making the colonel feel at home even when the French President must have been wishing he were.

For his pains, Mr Sarkozy was mocked and abused, not only by the press, but also some of his own close political allies, such as Rama Yade, the punchy human rights advocate whom Mr Sarkozy installed in the Foreign Ministry, who told a newspaper: “Colonel Gaddafi must understand that our country is not a doormat, on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come to wipe the blood of his crimes from his feet.”

“Gaddafi is making fools of us,” moaned one French newspaper. Another hissed: “The Libyan leader's stay has become a nightmare for Nicolas Sarkozy.” And what has the poor, put-upon President to show for his humiliation? Oh yes, hoped-for orders for billions of euros of French military and nuclear hardware. A stroke of luck, no?