“We never quite get out of it”: François Bayrou struck by a serious handicap in his youth

On December 13, 2024, François Bayrou was appointed Prime Minister to succeed Michel Barnier. The septuagenarian suffered from a severe disability in his youth, which earned him mockery.

The man who has just been appointed Prime Minister was a few decades ago the victim of his comrades because of the disability he carried. Bayrou was a stutterer as a child, the mayor of Pau told the l’Express several years ago.

“You never quite get over it”, explained the new head of government in the preface to Be a stutterer and shut up, by William Chiflet. If until he was seven, everything was going well and he was even nicknamed “the speaker”, everything had changed in primary school.

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Difficult years

François Bayrou had started to stutter. Also, a former classmate told the Parisien, “the boys called him Shakes… because he couldn't say Shakespeare”. Which confirms that “his stutter attracted mockery and sarcasm. But he was really brave”.

Also, François Bayrou went through his first years of school with a lot of difficulty.

But he managed to get rid of this disorder: “It's not a physical handicap, it's an internal blockage. You have to tame expression, language, speech and build yourself up internally. Tame the voice and tame the me”, he confided to the JDD a few years ago.

600,000 people affected in France

“It is a disorder of the flow or rhythm of speech, characterized by repetitions of words, syllables and sounds (phonemes), by prolongations of sounds, stops and blocks that give the impression of an effort”, defines the speech stuttering association.

1% of the population stutters in France, This represents 600,000 people. Men are four to five times more affected.

And if the disorder is generally benign – physically – “its repercussions on social life make it a real handicap, often still poorly understood. It can cause laughter, embarrassment, rejection, causing great suffering”.