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“It’s not Islam itself that poses a problem in the sense of its being a religion that is dangerous in itself, but because it wants to assert itself as a religion inside the French Republic,” he tells the authors. Asked about the French Right’s obsession with national identity and the Muslim veil, Hollande responds: “The veiled woman of today will become France’s Marianne (national icon) of tomorrow.”

The ambiguous comments were interpreted by some on the Right as Hollande suggesting that the national symbol may become a woman in a burka. But Hollande later said he wanted to see Muslim women integrated into France, “free” from the veil.

“If we manage to provide the right conditions for her to flourish she will free herself from her veil and become French, while still remaining a believer if she wants to be, capable of carrying forth an ideal,” he says. The comments sparked anger from Laurent Wauquiez, interim president of the opposition centre-Right Republicans party, who accused Hollande of being “willing to barter this symbol of the French Republic for political Islam.”

In the book, A President Shouldn’t Say This…, Hollande also lays into French footballers as unpatriotic “blokes from housing estates without bearings, without values, who left France too early” and who require “weight training on their brains.”

Hollande, 62, says Segolene Royal, the ecology minister and mother of his children, is the woman “to whom I feel the closest” despite his ongoing relationship with Julie Gayet, the actress, who he admits is “suffering” from the fact that he has refused to make their relationship official while president.

He focuses much bile on his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking re-election and who he blasts as a money-obsessed “little De Gaulle” full of “vulgarity, meanness and cynicism.”

However, Hollande, who yesterday told L’Obs magazine he is “ready” to run for re-election next spring, also admits he would have no qualms voting for Sarkozy should he end up in a run-off with Marine Le Pen, the far-Right Front National leader next year.