Women do not usually swoon at the sight of François Bayrou. But life has changed this week for the amiable centrist, who has surged to stardom in the French presidential race.

“Lou Bayrou”, as they call him in the Occitan of his native south, was warming to his pitch in a country grain market when a middle-aged admirer keeled over in the excited crowd. As the ambulancemen pushed through, the scene in Puylaurens, a hill town near Toulouse, felt more like one of the overheated rallies for “Sego” or “Sarko”, the two heavyweight contenders.

Mr Bayrou, 55, the eloquent but low-key leader of the small Union for French Democracy (UDF), is relishing a sense of vindication. The former education minister, the son of a Pyrenean farmer, came a distant fourth in the 2002 election but he always believed in his destiny.

Once mocked for his pretension, Mr Bayrou has emerged as a threat, especially to Segolãne Royal, the Socialist, but also to Nicolas Sarkozy, champion of the Right. Both have turned their guns on him this week as opinion polls indicated that he could reach the Elysee Palace.

“The time is right,” Mr Bayrou said as he reflected on his ambition aboard the small aircraft that was taking him on his day-trip around the Languedoc. “I am the one who is telling the truth and the French people are thirsting for truth.” The French have had enough of the “25year left-right civil war . . . They are sick of the cowardice under which they have been living,” he told The Times.

Mr Bayrou is convinced that France wants a centrist leader — and one who is pro-European and pro-business. Unlike the costly promises of Sego and Sarko, Mr Bayrou is offering austerity, with cuts in welfare spending.

He wants to revive business while also restoring the centralised state, which he calls the backbone of France. His ideal as the prime minister who would implement this, he says, would be a younger version of Jacques Delors, the French Socialist who became President of the European Commission.

A countryman, Roman Catholic and father of six, Mr Bayrou was long the Jean-Marie Le Pen of the chattering classes, an acceptable repository for protest compared with the far-right leader. He is reaping the support of leftwing voters who have fallen out of love with Ms Royal and her soap opera socialism. “I’m getting votes from the estates and from the extreme Right and Left,” he said. “It’s the anger vote”.

Ms Royal’s new team made the latest bid for his voters yesterday. Bernard Kouchner, a popular former minister who joined her team this week, said that Mr Bayrou was correct to reach out to the Left, but that he should ally himself with the Socialists.

The UDF leader rejects such overtures. “I am free and will remain free,” he said. Dr Kouchner is, however, one of the figures he is thinking about when he talks of appointing leftwingers to “my government”. In an election in which all the candidates are posing as outsiders, Mr Bayrou, a former teacher, has strong credentials as an opponent of the Parisian elite.

A horse-breeder, he likens Sarko and Sego to thoroughbreds who were admired from afar. With the April 22 first round approaching, voters are turning away from the worrying Sarko and the unfathomable Sego, he said. “They want a schoolbus driver and I am the one that they can trust with their kids,” he said.

Some insiders believe that Mr Bayrou may pull off the gamble that he undertook in 2002 when he refused to dissolve the UDF into President Chirac’s new Gaullist-led machine, the Union for a Popular Movement. The UMP is now Mr Sarkozy’s. Unlike the untouchable Mr Le Pen, who garnered the far-right protest in 2002 but was routed by Mr Chirac, Mr Bayrou would beat either of the main candidates in a run-off, polls indicate.

He is convinced that his big challenge is the first round, in which he rates about 17 per cent. He does not attract the mobs that gather around Ms Royal and Mr Sarkozy, but in the centre of Castres, the ancient local capital, a mother told her eight-year-old son: “Go and shake the hand of the Monsieur. He’s going to be President of France.”

Life and times

1951 Born son of farmer in Bordãres, Pyrenees

1973 Qualifies as teacher with highest postgraduate teaching qualification

1973 Father dies in accident falling off hay wagon, takes over family farm while teaching

1970s overcomes serious stutter

1986 becomes local MP

1993-7 Education Minister

1998 President of Union for French Democracy

2002 fourth place in presidential election

2007 February opinion polls show him closing on main candidates, with up to 17 per cent of first round vote. Shown as victor against Sarkozy and Royal in a run-off

First-round poll forecast

Ségolãne Royal 26%

Nicolas Sarkozy 33%

Jean-Marie Le Pen 14%

François Bayrou 17%

Source: CSA, 20 February

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