Seldom have the French been so glad to see the back of an official guest as they were last year when Colonel Muammar Gadaffi left Paris after a chaotic five-day visit when he pitched his bedouin tent a stone’s throw from the Elysée Palace.

Last week the Libyan leader had the last laugh when the French were reminded of the possibility that their recent guest is the son of a French war hero.

According to a legend circulating in Vezzani, Corsica, Gadaffi’s father was Albert Preziosi, who in 1941 was stationed in the Libyan desert. While he was there, the story goes, he had an affair with a local woman who gave birth to a son – Gadaffi.

Preziosi was shot down and killed over Russia in 1943. As a member of the famous Normandy-Nieman squadron, he has been celebrated in Vezzani ever since.

Vezzani’s mayor, Jean-Pierre Pagni, is convinced. “Nothing contradicts it,” he said, pointing to a framed photograph of the aviator, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Gadaffi as a young man.

Gadaffi’s origins have always been mysterious. The Italian occupation of Libya destroyed all records. Officially, he was born in 1942 into a bedouin family. Last week a magazine, digging into the French air force archives, uncovered an exchange of letters between senior officers about Gadaffi’s alleged paternity.

It showed that in 1999 General Silvestre de Sacy concluded that the Corsican connection was untrue. In 1941-2, Preziosi was based 400 miles from Gadaffi’s birthplace. Besides, war was a serious business when “personnel would not have been distracted by the presence of women”.

François Preziosi, the son of a cousin of the aviator, said he had known the Gadaffi story for as long as he could remember. On making inquiries he was told it was a “professional secret”.

The only way to settle the mystery is with a DNA test – if anyone is bold enough to ask Gadaffi to take part.

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