PARIS (AFP) - A burly bearded man wearing a cap and a purple sweatshirt who loomed over France's president-elect Emmanuel Macron as he celebrated his victory on Sunday night has been revealed as a pizzeria owner from western France.
Morgan Simon, a 31-year-old from western Brittany, became a social media star after appearing on stage behind Macron and his wife Brigitte at the climax of his victory party outside the Louvre museum in Paris.
A visual contrast in his large sweatshirt and cap, compared with Macron and his 64-year-old wife Brigitte dressed in Louis Vuitton, Simon explained Monday how he had found himself on the stage.
He was one of the more than 250,000 people who signed up to Macron's En Marche political movement, founded in April last year, and had knocked on doors and campaigned for the independent centrist.
"At the moment of the Marseillaise (France's national anthem), they asked us to go on stage," he told Le Parisien newspaper. tailored "I was with a friend and we were among the first on stage so we stood near him, not realising that we'd be in the line of the cameras."
