fortune-teller

Two other defendants - self-styled independent journalist Natacha Rey and internet fortune-teller Amandine Roy – were already found guilty of slander last year for claiming that France's first lady had never existed, and that her brother had changed gender and started using her name.

Two of them - self-styled independent journalist Natacha Rey and internet fortune-teller Amandine Roy – were found guilty of slander last year for claiming that France's first lady had never existed, and that her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux had changed gender and started using her name.

The pair - Roy an internet fortune-teller, Rey a self-styled independent journalist - discussed at length in a YouTube video the baseless rumour that Brigitte Macron had at some point undergone gender reassignment.

“I think what foreigners see isn’t the reality,” said Nattipong Boonpuang, a 32-year-old fortune-teller and model.

“And yet, she added, what is the difference? Right now you are a child holding hands with a fortune-teller. All the rest is hypothesis and dream.”