This Europe: Mrs Chirac and the French ticklers at the palace gates

When a bloodcurdling scream pierced the night outside the French presidential palace, Bernadette Chirac, the formidable first lady of France, took the law into her own hands. Thinking that a woman was being murdered, she rushed to the window, and then ran into the street.

The first lady was displeased to find that the law – in the form of a female police guard and two male colleagues – was the origin of the rumpus.

A female trainee officer, patrolling the streets outside the Elysée Palace, ruefully told the first lady that it was she who had screamed. She said that a male colleague had come up behind her and "tickled me on the hips" (to use the euphemism employed in the official police report).

According to the same report, Ms Chirac "made her indignation known for a period of 10 minutes" (ie she let the police officers have it with both barrels).

The incident happened a few days before the 14 July military parade, in which Mr Chirac's security was genuinely threatened by a far-right activist with a rifle. Details of the goings-on outside the Elysée on the night of 10 July – apparently not an islolated incident – appeared in all their grim detail in the satirical French newspaper Le Canard Enchainé yesterday.

A leaked police report contains the harrowing confessions of three police officers. It appears that Elysée guards habitually pass the night by playing tricks on one another, such as knocking each other's hats off.

The female trainee, named only as Miss F G, told the investigation that one of her colleagues had tickled her "three times".

Her colleague admitted he had teased her by tickling her – to use the euphemism – "at the level of her hips". Another policeman admitted failing to stop the horse-play. All three officers face disciplinary procedures.

French radio stations, meanwhile, were asking yesterday how it was that President Chirac – who ran his election campaign earlier this year on a law-and-order platform – let his wife go into the street to solve the mystery of the late-night scream.