i understand, cover a french presidential election. i did, you're very well informed. it was one of those moments, it was a sliding door moment. i was kind of working for nothing, making the tea, etc, and thenjohn snow's producer fell ill and he needed somebody to go to the south of france — we were in paris at the time — to go coverjacques chirac�*s rally. it was the eve of the election, and he was the prime minister and he was standing to be president against francois mitterrand, and he just released the french hostages from beirut that day. he'd used his power as prime minister to potentially persuade the french electorate to vote for him. these french hostages were national services and they'd been incarcerated in beirut for a very long time. national news bulletins every night started with their faces and the number of days that they have