who would win in a fight between dracula and mary poppins?

Dracula and Mary Poppins fight it out on screen for the last votes

from the times

Charles Bremner in Paris

About 20 million viewers will tune in to a French television duel tonight between Dracula and Mary Poppins.

The images are the caricatures of each other that Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy hope to imprint in viewers’ minds as the finalists for the French presidency vie for millions of undecided votes ahead of Sunday’s run-off.

Ms Royal, 53, the Socialist challenger, and Mr Sarkozy, 52, the conservative favourite, have been rehearsing with sparring partners of the opposite sex to devise the killer lines that could swing the vote.

The first French candidates’ debate since 1995 is the last chance for Ms Royal to capture the centrist vote that she needs to break the momentum of the reforming conservative who is running more than four points ahead of her in polls. She aims to needle the tightly-strung Mr Sarkozy into revealing the dark and “brutal” side of his nature that she and the Left have turned into their chief weapon.

Adapting his usual aggressive tactics for combat with a woman, Mr Sarkozy will seek to highlight Ms Royal’s shifting opinions and shaky grasp of matters of state.

They will face one another six feet apart at a square table while they answer questions from two interviewers.

Mr Sarkozy has been training with female sparring partners to find a tone that establishes superiority without condescension. The pugnacious Sarko insists that he will not treat a woman differently from a male opponent, but he could not resist a touch of Gallic gallantry on Sunday, saying: “You should not reduce Mme Royal to her femininity – as great as hers is. She is a politician.”

To gain the upper hand, Ms Royal must exude a presidential authority that has been lacking from a shaky campaign in which even supporters have compared her nurturing, brisk, style to that of Mary Poppins. She will probe in Mr Sarkozy’s steely self-assurance by needling him over the supposedly heartless reforms that he is planning for France.

The last Royal-Sarkozy debate on television has been traced to 1993. Mr Sarkozy was a junior minister after a general election in which Ms Royal lost her junior ministerial post. She accused him of bullying and called him a steamroller.

“Don’t speak to me like that!” she snapped. “All the viewers can see that what you are saying is off the wall.”

With his promises of radical change, Mr Sarkozy maintains a four to six point lead, but there is uncertainty because one in five voters are undecided. The indecision reaches 40 per cent among the 18 per cent of voters who backed François Bayrou in the first round.

Ms Royal has spent the past week courting these key voters by casting herself as a safe choice for peaceful change and predicting upheaval if Mr Sarkozy wins.

Ms Royal’s strategy springs from figures that show that the deciding factor in the election will be the strength of feeling against Mr Sarkozy. A Sofres poll yesterday found that 56 per cent of those who intend to vote for Ms Royal will do so because they want to block Mr Sarkozy. Only 42 per cent believed in the candidate.

President Chirac’s former Interior Minister has been campaigning for the past week to soften the harsh image that has fuelled the “anyone but Sarkozy” campaign. “I want to protect France from the out-sourcing of jobs,” he told France television yesterday. “I want to control immigration, I want to give them the security to which they are entitled.”

Mr Sarkozy may have been helped with centrist voters when Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-Right National Front, called on his supporters to abstain from voting in Sunday’s election.

France has had no presidential debate since 1995 because President Chirac refused to engage with Mr Le Pen after he broke through into the run-off in 2002.

Killer lines in three of the four previous debates were credited with helping swing the vote in the final days of campaign. In 1974, in the first debate, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Finance Minister from the centre-right, scored a hit against François Mitterrand, the veteran Socialist opposition leader, by saying: “You do not have a monopoly over the heart, Mr Mitterrand.”

The killer questions

He should say

What is the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas?

What is the difference between an aircraft carrier and a submarine?

Which capitalists do you plan to start punishing first?

Who will defend the country if the Army is supervising juvenile delinquents?

Why do you admire Tony Blair?

She should say

Which brand of tranquiliser works for you?

When will you publish your wealth-tax return?

How will you protect French industry while promoting free trade?

Why has your wife Cécilia been absent for most of the campaign and what will she do if you are elected?

Why do you admire Tony Blair?

I wish we could see that here in America.. it would be fun to watch

Mary Poppins! I think.

mary poppins isn't a socialist