The truth about the vicious rumours that Brigitte Macron was born a man: PAUL BRACCHI reveals the real story of French First Lady's controversial background as her husband is forced to deny them again

The cute little girl with a pudding bowl haircut sitting on her mother's knee is Brigitte Trogneux. Her family are renowned chocolatiers and confectioners in the Amiens region of northern France where the upmarket Trogneux brand is as well-known as, say, Thorntons is in Britain.

But the family - or rather the youngster in the photograph - has another, much greater, claim to fame today.

She grew up to be Brigitte Macron, France's first lady, wife of President Emmanuel Macron. Trogneux is her maiden name.

The black-and-white family portrait, featuring her parents and siblings, was taken back in the 1950s.

Could anyone, least of all Brigitte herself, have imagined that more than half a century on it would be used in a smear campaign by the far-Right, who falsely claimed she was born a man.

The  little girl with a pudding bowl haircut sitting on her mother's knee is Brigitte Trogneux, and far left is her brother Jean-Michel 

Last year, Brigitte won a libel case against the freelance journalist who made the initial claim, yet it's a vicious and unfounded rumour that has not completely disappeared from parts of social media.

Most recently, Brigitte's daughter Tiphaine Auziere, a lawyer, has talked about the impact of the accusations.

In an interview earlier this month to mark the publication of a novel she's written, Tiphaine, 40, told Paris Match: 'I have concerns about the level of society when I hear what is circulating on social networks about my mother being a man.

'The confidence with which it is said, and the credibility given to it is proclaimed. How can we resist disinformation on social networks?'

Mr Macron himself, speaking on International Women's Day last week after the publication of the interview, expressed his anger and frustration at the rumours and their effect on their private life. 

'The worst thing is the false information and fabricated scenarios,' he said. 'People eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your intimacy.' 

The claim initially went unnoticed when a small far-Right monthly publication called Faits et Documents (Facts and Documents) went to press with the results of a so-called 'three-year investigation' into Mrs Macron, now 70, in September 2021.

But when 'correspondent' Natasha Rey - who contributes to the journal and has a history of attacking the Macrons on Facebook - gave an interview on YouTube that year, the allegations went viral online.

In the interview, she referred to the old Trogneux family photograph. The little girl sitting on her mother's knee, she claimed, was probably Nathalie Farcy, who was orphaned when Brigitte's older sister, Maryvonne, was killed in a car crash, along with her husband, Paul Farcy, when Brigitte was very young.

And Brigitte? Her birth name, she claimed, was Jean-Michel Trogneux - the boy in the checked shirt in the photograph - before 'he' became a transgender woman and underwent a sex change operation in the early 1980s.

You couldn't make it up, could you?

Almost immediately the 'story' began circulating widely on social media.

Websites associated with the far-Right, antivaxxers, the Yellow Vests ('Gilets Jaunes') anti-government movement and QAnon extremists, who believe the US is in the grip of devil-worshipping child abusers, spread the false claims.

The attack on Mrs Macron led to fears of the 'Trump-isation' of political debate in France, with fake news being used to potentially sway voters, particularly by the far-Right in the Presidential election of 2022, which Macron went on to win.

Brigitte Macron with her daughter Tiphaine Auziere, who has spoken out about her mother's history in a recent Paris Match interview

Brigitte's family are renowned chocolatiers and confectioners in the Amiens region of northern France where the upmarket Trogneux brand is as well-known as Thorntons is in Britain

The 'trigger' for the pseudo-investigation in Faits et Documents - 'The Mystery of Brigitte Macron' - was 'physique', according to Ms Rey, who claimed that 'experts', including cosmetic surgeons 'all agree with me that [Brigitte Macron] is a transsexual'.

Ludicrous, maybe, but a YouGov survey in 2021 found that a higher proportion of French and American people were likely to believe conspiracy theories (38 and 33 per cent respectively) than their British counterparts (19 per cent).

The dirty-tricks campaign against the Macrons illustrates how easily fiction can apparently turn into fact with just a few clicks and a hashtag in today's world.

Our own research suggests that the 'boy in the checked shirt' is possibly her late older brother Jean-Claude. He was eight years older than Brigitte and became manager of the family chocolate factory.

Birth certificates in France, unlike the UK, can only be obtained by the person whose name is on the certificate or a relative of that person.

But the arrival of Brigitte Macron in the world was published in the Courrier Picard, daily newspaper of the Picardy region of which Amiens, her home city, is the capital, which records her birth on April 13, 1953.

Referring to Brigitte's three sisters and two brothers, it reads: 'Anne-Marie, Jean-Claude, Maryvonne, Monique and Jean-Michel Trogneux have great joy in announcing the arrival of their little sister, Brigitte.'

The Faits et Documents magazine says Elysee officials 'had been unable to provide a photograph of Brigitte as a child'.

Brigitte entered the Elysee Palace in 2017 as the wife of the youngest president in French history - she was 64, Emmanuel was 39

We found numerous in reputable French publications including a seven-year-old Brigitte taking her first Holy Communion, not to mention one of her playing in the garden of her home as well as all in white on her wedding day, with her first (late) husband, wealthy banker Andre-Louis Auziere.

Before she entered the Elysee Palace in 2017 as the wife of the youngest president in French history - she was 64, he was 39 - Mrs Macron, a former teacher, told her pupils: 'You'll hear remarks, true and false. I'll never talk about them.'

Brigitte made an exception in this case, however. Natasha Rey, 48, and Amandine Roy, a 52-year-old clairvoyant who appeared on the four-hour YouTube video in December 2021, were found guilty of libel and initially fined the equivalent of £1,700 each, reduced on appeal to £850 for Roy and £400 for Rey.

Yet, beyond the vicious rumours, the story of Brigitte Macron is fascinating in its own right, and not without scandal.

She first met Emmanuel Macron in September 1992. She was 39, a married mother-of-three and a teacher at the French Catholic school in Amiens. He was 15 and a pupil in the same class as one of her daughters.

Their 24-year age gap still draws gasps, except in France where the allure of the older woman has long been celebrated.

Mrs Macron, who has been compared to Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve, regularly graces the cover of Paris Match and other celebrity magazines. So much for being 'born male'.

Throughout their 16-year marriage, she has played a key role in his political career, 'somewhere between a spin doctor and eminence grise', to quote one commentator.

But back in Amiens, their developing friendship all those years ago caused outrage locally.

Brigitte's family ran the confectionery shop in Place Notre Dame, in the centre of the city, now the flagship branch of the Trogneux chain which has 12 other branches across northern France.

Their speciality was macarons, sweet treats made from almonds, honey and egg whites.

Her father was a pillar of respectability, a regular church-goer and a member of the Rotary Club.

Brigitte attended the Sacred Heart convent school; everyone knew her since she was a child and watched her growing up as the youngest of six siblings.

Her family called her the 'happy little princess'. 'It suited her perfectly - she was a lovely little girl who was always the centre of attention,' said a family friend.

Another Amiens resident, who knows the family well, added: 'She was always getting wonderful presents and being treated like a princess. She was a real little girl who liked to dress up and put on her mother's jewellery.

'She used to be given silver bracelets and the like from her parents. When she passed her exams, they got her a moped.'

At the age of 21, on a trip to the seaside town of Le Touquet, where her family had a holiday home, she met Andre-Louis Auziere, who was born in Cameroon, where his father worked as a diplomat.

At 23, he was two years older than Brigitte, who was still a student, and had embarked on what proved to be a successful career in banking.

They were duly married in the local town hall in 1974, the same year Emmanuel Macron's parents were married, incidentally.

By the time Brigitte was 26, two girls and a boy had arrived.

Despite these easily checked, verifiable facts, the Faits et Documents magazine persisted with its scurrilous 'she was born a male' narrative.

What no one disputes is that Brigitte would eventually get a teaching post at Lycee La Providence Catholic school in Amiens.

One of the classes she taught was drama. The star pupil was Emmanuel Macron, whose mother and father were doctors.

Both sets of parents were dismayed by the rumours that they were having an affair. The teenage Emmanuel was sent away to Paris to complete his education. But their relationship continued at a distance for 13 years, and the rest, as they say, is history.

'There are times in your life when you need to make vital choices,' Mrs Macron would explain in an interview many years later.

'And for me, that was it. What has been said over the past 20 years is insignificant. Of course, we have breakfast together, me and my wrinkles, him with his youth, but it's like that.'

There were no public sightings of Brigitte's first husband after she left him in 1996 and he died in December 2019, aged 66.

Their son Sebastien Auziere - who at 48 is just two years older than his step father Macron - has worked for the president as a statistician.

Their elder daughter Laurence, 46, was in the same class as Emmanuel at school in Amiens where Brigitte was a teacher.

Younger daughter Tiphaine has publicly supported the relationship. 'If I have to give a vision of love, it's Emmanuel and Mummy,' she said in an interview in 2018.

And in her recent interview with Paris Match, she said of the furore it caused in their small town: 'I learned a lot about human nature.

'I know that, in these moments, we must focus on the essential and move forward without taking into account criticism.

'The attacks, the backbiting, the judgments. It was not yet the era of social networks, but we were in a small provincial town. Everything is known.

'Despite all this, they stood tall. I gained an open mind, the desire to move forward without listening to peripheral noise, and gained greater tolerance.'