Three months away from his expected retirement, President Chirac has for the first time confirmed his appetite for extraconjugal affairs, saying that he loved many women in his lifetime “as discreetly as possible”.

The 74-year-old French President offered a glimpse of his busy love life in a new book in which he reviews his twelve-year presidency and four decades as a senior politician. He also talked of the chronic mental illness of Laurence, his 48-year-old daughter, which he called “the drama of my life”.

Like many French politicians, Mr Chirac has enjoyed a reputation as a Don Juan character. The late François Mitterrand, his predecessor, revealed an illegitimate daughter and secret second household before he left office in 1995.

“I didn’t hate women, but I didn’t overdo it,” Mr Chirac told Pierre Péan, who interviewed him for his book L’Inconnu de l’Elysée (The Stranger at the Elysée), to be published on Thursday. Mitterrand performed the same confessional exercise with Péan before he left office. The book is seen as confirmation that the President has ruled out standing for reelection in April, despite his refusal to say so. Mr Chirac said that Bernadette, his wife since 1956, was exaggerating when she reported four years ago that women had always flocked around her handsome husband. He played down the importance of his dalliances.

It was possible that a particular journalist had been his mistress when he was Prime Minister in the 1970s, he said, “but it is not something that had a big effect on me”.

“Amorous adventures have not played a determining role in my life. There have been women I have loved a lot, as discreetly as possible,” he said. Mr Chirac insisted that there had never been any question of leaving his wife, whom he met when both were students at the Political Sciences Institute in Paris.

The President did, however, appear to deny one old rumour: that he fathered an illegitimate son in Japan. His confession, published by the magazine Marianne in advance of the book release, has caused barely a ripple, in keeping with France’s traditional tolerance for its leaders’ dalliances and with the existing knowledge of the pastimes of Mr Chirac.

The taboo over public discussion of the sex lives of politicians was broken a decade ago. In 2001, Jean-Claude Lomond, a former chauffeur for Mr Chirac, depicted him in a book as a prolific consumer of women in his Gaullist entourage. “To an almost sickening degree,” wrote Mr Lomond, “Chirac has had party militants, secretaries, all those with whom he spent five busy minutes.” The love life of Mr Chirac was also itemised in Sexus Politicus, a best-selling book on the love lives of politicians published last year.

The President has attracted more headlines with the emotional tribute that he paid to Bernadette on Sunday. “She has constantly taught me that there were people who were suffering and this has to be taken into account,” he said.

Mrs Chirac, who has emerged in recent years as a force in her own right, said that it was rare to hear such praise from him. “It is the first time that my husband has brought up . . . our life as a couple.”Mr Chirac said in the book that he regretted neglecting his family as he pursued his career. His wife had devoted herself to the family and in particular managing Laurence, who has suffered from severe anorexia, has made suicide attempts and lives in care.

“There is no point in denying it . . . it has been the drama of my life,” Mr Chirac said. “I had a daughter who was intelligent and pretty, and who was hit by mental anorexia when she was 15.” Their other daughter, Claude, is her father’s closest adviser.

Mr Chirac voiced admiration for Mitterrand and contempt for Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former President whom he served as Prime Minister.

He gives a mixed review to Nicolas Sarkozy, the former protégé who has taken over the leadership of his Union for a Popular Majority and is the favourite to win the presidency.

Mr Sarkozy was talented but too liberal and pro-American, he said. Mr Chirac also expanded on his dislike for the bullying nature of the US. The 2003 Iraq invasion was an example. “I told [President] Bush 36 times that he was committing a monumental error,” he said.

Private lives

1899 Félix Faure dies of a stroke in the Elysée Palace while receiving oral sex

1970s Valéry Giscard d’Estaing reported to have visited female friends on solitary nighttime jaunts

1981-95 François Mitterrand maintains a second household with Anne Pingeot, his mistress, and Mazarine, their daughter

1995 Jacques Chirac enters the Elysée with a longstanding reputation as a ladies’ man. He confirms his reputation this week in L’Inconnu de l’Elysée, a book of interviews with Pierre Péan

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