France upset at Cameron ‘dwarf’ insult to Sarkozy

David Cameron and George Osborne may have some diplomatic fence-mending to do should the Conservative Party win the general election, following reports that the French have complained about jokes they are alleged to have made about Nicolas Sarkozy's height.

According to the Mail on Sunday, the original slight came back in September 2009, when in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, it is implied that Cameron made a rather enigmatic comment about "hidden dwarfs".

The interviewer writes: "Afterwards we study the framed photographs on his desk: two with Barack Obama, several with Baroness Thatcher, one with Nicolas Sarkozy that prompts a joke about 'hidden dwarfs' and one with Arnold Schwarzenegger ('I like it because I'm taller than the Terminator')." Neither the full joke nor the identity of the person who cracked it is recorded. What is known is that Cameron is 6ft, while Sarkozy is 165cm (5ft 5in for Tory metric martyrs).

Is there an obsession with the French president's stature in senior Tory circles? Just three days later, while giving a speech to businessmen in Westminster, shadow chancellor Osborne, 5ft 11in, referred to a box left at the lectern by a previous speaker as a "Sarkozy box" before laughing hysterically at his own joke.

'Dwarfgate' came out during Sarkozy's visit to Britain last week, when he met separately with the prime minister Gordon Brown and David Cameron. The  BBC's Newsnight reported that French officials had complained to Britain following the slights, saying Cameron and Osborne had "failed to show sufficient respect" for the French president. The Mail on Sunday quotes a diplomatic source in Paris as saying: "Yes, it was discussed with the French and, yes, they weren't happy about it."

The affair comes at a delicate time for Sarkozy, who is currently weathering rumours that he and his wife Carla Bruni are having affairs – and faces a total wipeout in French regional elections at the hands of the opposition Socialists.

But spare a thought for the one person in the affair who has actually been severely wronged – slandered even. Estimates of Arnold Schwarzenegger's height range from 6 ft 1in to 6ft 2in: either way, that would make the Terminator at least one inch taller than David Cameron. ·