He writes novels, he acts, he's a master of satire. Who says it

Antoine de Caunes is a man of hidden depths. Philip Watson uncovers his secret life He's Belgian. Only joking. He's as French as haricots verts. Yet such is the Channel-sized gap between the person we think the king of Eurotrash is, and who he actually is, that you could be forgiven for believing it.

In Britain we know only the Carry On Clouseau side of the faux- Froggie. Along with Eric Cantona and David Ginola, Antoine de Caunes has become one of our great contemporary Gallic symbols. He is the acceptable face of modern Frenchiness, a presenter who plays with national stereotypes, who breaks down the Euro-comedy barriers. He is living proof of a most shocking notion: that a Frenchman can be funny.

Antoine de Caunes: Franco funny man and Euro-Walloon? Over the last 12 years, we have seen only one side of him: the goofball, the prankster and the fool. Part of his humour, of course, lies in his exaggerated, cartoon-like accent. It is so self-consciously Franais in stress and rhythm that at times you wonder whether he is putting it on (he is not) - and sending us up (he is, very slightly.) In conversation a word like "decade" comes out like "dickhead"; "indisciplined" becomes a chinera of extravagant syllables and elongated vowels: "een-deeze-hip-line-ed". Listening to him reminds me of an old Maurice Chevalier anecdote. Rehearsing in London, the French singer and actor checked that his accent was OK, only to be reassured that it was. "No," he replied, "I mean, it is enough?" He is more than aware that the main appeal of Eurotrash is its very liberal share of salacious sex and soft porn, but he also enjoys playing a subversive game with the programme, its format and its audience. You feel De Caunes is on the side of the programme's very willing victims and of the viewer. "People on TV always play a character, whatever the programme, and I know how to act the host, how to act with the camera as my partner, and how to fool around with it," he says, as we sit chatting in the bar of an insufferably fashionable Parisian hotel. ''And I like my Eurotrash personality - I feel very close to it because it is very childish." Eurotrash, however, only tells a small part of the Antoine de Caunes story. Born in the suburbs of Paris in 1953, De Caunes was almost genetically pre-destined to pursue a career in television and comedy. His father, Georges, was a journalist who became the presenter of the main 8 o'clock evening news during the 50s and 60s. His mother, Jacqueline Joubert, was a comedienne before turning to television as a continuity announcer, director and producer. De Caunes's maternal grandfather was also a comedian; his daughter Emma is now the fourth generation to make people laugh for a living. "I was born with TV," he says. "At some points I saw more of my parents on TV than in real life and it was hard to draw a line between their image and who they really were. So when I started to work in TV, there was nothing fancy or glamorous or magic about it. It seemed completely natural." Sent away to a strict Jesuit boarding school in Fontainebleau at the age of 13 because he had begun to rebel and skip lessons ("I was very naughty," he says in a pretend-pukka English accent), he says he can now see the benefit of the highly disciplined regime. "In a very strange way, it made me stronger and today I am almost grateful. I understand that the only secret of success is hard work and that you must fight and refuse to submit if you want to keep your integrity." He studied literature at university in Paris, leaving halfway through his third year intending to become a reportage photographer. He claims he fell into television work by accident when Sygma, the photo agency he was working for, set up a television division to make music programmes. De Caunes has always been a music fanatic: he learnt much of his English through Beatles lyrics, especially from Sergeant Pepper. During the 1970s, he produced several pioneering rock programmes. In 1979, unable to find a suitable presenter for a new show he had devised, he was encouraged to step in front of the camera. He was an instant success and went on to host other music and style programmes, including, in 1985, Rapido. Around this time he also began an association with a new pay-TV channel called Canal Plus, which led to him being offered his own weekday evening show called Nulle Part Ailleurs (Nowhere Else). Part- serious and part-satirical, the programme featured irreverent and humorous topical monologues (delivered and part-written by De Caunes), straight interviews and surreal sketches. Famously, he once interviewed Jack Lang, the former French minister for culture, wearing nothing more than a small placard across his privates. Held together by its host's charm, wit and intelligence, the programme established De Caunes, over a seven year period from 1988, as one of France's premier (and best paid) TV presenters and personalities. He left the show unexpectedly, at the height of its popularity to pursue an acting career. At first he had a series of bit parts in films that ranged from romantic comedies to serious social dramas. Others sound like they might have featured as comic oddities on Eurotrash: C'est Pour la Bonne Cause explored the integration of a group of Rwandan refugees sent on holiday to France; and in L'Homme est Une Femme Comme Les Autres he played an impoverished, gay Jewish clarinettist offered 10 million francs to marry and produce an heir. Yet it was the latter, De Caune's first lead role, that saw French critics and audience begin to take him seriously. He has since appeared in a film made by one of France's leading directors, Claude Chabrol, and plans to direct his first later this year. Antoine de Caunes lives alone in a secluded country house just outside Trouville on the Normandy coast. It is "a very British red- brick family house" set in a "garden with thousands of roses". Trouville itself is a small seaside resort of tacky casinos and fine seafood restaurants. Antoine de Caunes is so well known in the town that his favourite patisserie has named a cake (tarte Antoine) after him. It is here that he entertains friends and welcomes Emma, his daughter from a short-lived marriage in his 20s, and also Louis, his 11-year-old son from a subsequent relationship. Both woman left him. He has had other girlfriends, but for the past two years he has been dating actress Elsa Zylberstein, his co-star in L'Homme est une Femme Comme les Autres. He has often admitted to being difficult to live with. Perhaps his failure to make relationships work is a result of his parents' divorce when he was in his teens. Yet there is also an unavoidable Peter Pan quality to De Caunes's debonair look and degage manner. Trouville is where he writes his novels. A lover of De Maupassant and Dumas, he also likes populist British writers such as Ian Fleming, Wilkie Collins and Robert Louis Stevenson ("Treasure Island is one of the best books ever written"), as well as US crime novelist James Ellroy. De Caunes' two thrillers, C'est Beau Mais c'est Triste, feature a heavy-drinking, smoking and womanising New York cop. "Of course, he is a Vietnam vet and, of course, he is very violent," says De Caunes, laughing. "But he is also very sarcastic and the books are very tongue-in-cheek." They also feature their creator. When I charge him with rampant egotism, he argues that he makes fun of himself in the books. In the first he appears as a TV presenter - but of a low-rent daytime cooking programme that serves up naked girls, bad food and even worse jokes. In the second, he is a struggling actor on a soap series on Ukrainian TV. "I love to go to Normandy, switch off the phone, and spend three months writing," he says. "I have such fun with the books - writing them has been some of the best times in my life - ever." You sense he enjoys the dichotomy between his differing images either side of the Channel, of working it both ways, of operating in the gaps between the stereotypes, languages and accents. He mistrusts concepts of low and high brow and is not afraid to be populist. In the end, he is Voltaire and Candide. "You can have a light side and a deep side - they are not exclusive, and there is no contradiction - I know that I need both sides without being ashamed of either," he says. "The spirit of Eurotrash and Le Show is to do an entertainment programme - but that doesn't mean you're nothing more than a TV soap bubble. It's like telling a clown he doesn't have depth - that he has no tears." This article originally appeared in the May 99 issue of Esquire magazine mini profile Four things you didn't know about Antoine de Caunes: 1. He is 45 and has a daughter; 2. He is huge in France, a highly respected comedian and actor who has appeared in seven films; 3. He has written two crime thrillers, published to critical and commercial acclaim; 4. He has a new comedy chat show on Channel 4

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