For three decades Lévy has reigned supreme as the demigod of the television debate show, famous less for his intellectual standpoints than for his beautifully coifed hair and fondness for displaying more chest than is polite in scholarly circles. Now his critics are questioning whether BHL, as he is semi-affectionately known, really deserves to occupy the space vacated by Derrida, Sartre, Foucault and other greats of French postwar philosophy.

The authors of a book that dissects his research methods, “Le BA BA de BHL” (“The ABC of BHL”), say they were motivated by impatience with his “massive ego,” his relentless promotion of himself as “France’s greatest intellectual” and the unquestioning adulation usually accorded him in the French media. The books reflect an outburst of irritation with the powerful cult of personality Lévy has created for himself over the decades, based as much on his glamorous lifestyle as on his publications.

More likely to be feted by Paris Match than by contemporary philosophy journals, Lévy appears regularly on the diary pages of French glossy magazines, his arm wrapped around the famously narrow waist of his third wife, actor Arielle Dombasle. “It’s not possible for the media to hold him up as a great intellectual when he isn’t recognized by any philosopher or university,” Erwan Poiraud, a professor of political science in Paris, whose doctoral thesis is titled: “BHL — a media intellectual,” told Le Parisien. “His strength is in rapid thought. Where a philosopher might take five years to complete a nuanced work, he takes four months to write a book, which comes ready-made for television and radio.”

Richard Labevière, a journalist with French radio, and Bruno Jeanmart, philosopher at Grenoble University, have already finished work on their book, uncompromisingly titled “The Absence of Thought in Bernard-Henri Lévy,” which concludes that Lévy’s work is “hollow.”

Meanwhile Nicolas Beau, a journalist with the satirical and investigative weekly paper Le Canard Enchainée, has collaborated with another writer, Olivier Toscer, to produce a study of the origins of the writer’s fortune, which is estimated at around 150 million euros (about $191 million).

Much of this wave of interest has been triggered by Lévy’s controversial book on the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan, “Who Killed Daniel Pearl?” Classed as a “romanquete” — half novel, half investigation — the book, published last year, upset Pearl’s family with its fictionalized re-creation of his death. It was also criticized for its errors and extravagant conclusion — that Pearl was killed because knew too much about al-Qaida’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons.

Most alarming for Lévy is the imminent publication of a book by Philippe Cohen, the coauthor of “The Hidden Face of Le Monde,” a bestselling and aggressive investigation into the newspaper, which caused a sensation last year. The latest work is thought to stretch to more than 500 pages and to analyze the writer’s private life in detail.

Lévy refused to make any comment on the biographies when contacted Thursday, but he has told friends that he is not wounded by the onslaught and that he sees this explosion of interest in him as an enormous compliment, pointing out that never before has a single writer attracted so many biographies in such a short period of time. He says that at 56 he has learnt how to deal with criticism. “When one attacks BHL one does not attack Bernard-Henri Lévy … BHL is a caricature,” he said recently.

The source of this unusual fascination with the U.S. campaign lies with the local mayor, an influential environmental campaigner, former government minister and himself a onetime presidential candidate, who sports a “Vote John Kerry” sticker in the rear window of his Volvo. Although Democratic campaigners in the U.S. have asked him to keep quiet about it, everyone here knows that Mayor Brice Lalonde is Kerry’s first cousin. Their mothers are sisters who spent much of their childhood in this Brittany village.

If Saint-Briac-sur-Mer is full of enthusiasm for Kerry, the feeling is not reciprocated. In the current climate of U.S. Francophobia, these close French ties are perceived as positively dangerous to the Democrats’ campaign — to the extent that Kerry has stopped showing off his French in public, deflects questions about his European roots and never refers to the family estate in Saint-Briac. The U.S. side of the clan is so desperate to avoid damaging association with the cheese-eating surrender monkeys that when Lalonde traveled to support his cousin at the Democratic Convention in August, many of his relatives were horrified.

“One part of the family refused to speak French with me and wanted me to hide,” he says. “Having French relatives is not seen as an advantage; I really sensed the anti-French feeling during the convention. It was extremely painful.”

Lalonde, 58, has been advised not to talk to the French press in case Republican researchers seize on his opinions as fuel for anti-Kerry campaigning. President Bush has already scored points by portraying his rival as excessively concerned about other countries’ opinions. Kerry’s comment that foreign policy should pass a “global test” has become a key line of attack, and the president has said with disdain that “countries like France” should not be allowed to influence U.S. decisions. Hinting at Kerry’s Continental ties, White House officials spat the worst insult possible at him: “He looks French.” “I don’t want the French media to start saying that Kerry is French, or that Kerry is the French candidate. The Republican press could manipulate the French headlines in a way that would be very damaging for Kerry,” Lalonde says.

This enforced secrecy is a pity, because Lalonde might have some useful advice to offer his cousin. It’s true that his presidential bid in 1981 brought him just 3 percent of the vote — a result that he hopes Kerry will beat — but in his more recent campaign to be elected as mayor, he gained a backing of 80 percent. “To be a successful candidate, you must be careful what you eat and you must be sure to sleep well,” he says, as he works his way through a plate of three dozen oysters, bought from the Friday market in the square opposite the mairie.

Lalonde’s empire is somewhat smaller than the one his cousin is fighting for. Saint-Briac has only 2,000 permanent residents, although it expands to 12,000 in the summer when tourists flock to the beaches. Its economy once rested on fishing and agriculture, but now centers on tourism, and out of season it’s a gloomy place — most of the houses are shuttered, the souvenir shops are closed and the crazy golf course is deserted. During mayoral meetings, Lalonde discusses villagers’ concerns about rising property prices and coastal pollution. Residents have never experienced a terrorist attack, and don’t even have a crime problem to speak of.

The family’s Saint-Briac connection may be something of an embarrassment to Kerry, but it was crucial to Lalonde’s 1995 mayoral campaign. He attributes his success to the residual affection that everyone in the village has for his and Kerry’s maternal grandmother, Margaret Winthrop Forbes, who retired and died here. “Everyone remembers our grandmother. She gave a lot of jobs to the villagers. She was a fine woman, an eccentric who insisted on having her cream brought from Jersey cows. The village was made up of fishermen and peasants at that time, and they liked her. That fondness for our grandmother has translated into fondness for Kerry and for me,” he says.

All Lalonde’s childhood summers were spent here, playing on the beaches with dozens of cousins, who traveled here every summer from America, Scotland, England and Switzerland. When Kerry’s father was serving as a diplomat in Europe, John came often, and he and Lalonde — a couple of years younger — became close.

“Johnny was tall and always very fond of sport and organized all the games,” he says. They would hunt for octopuses together in the shallows. “But we knew that he would be interested in public affairs. He was always a very serious boy — he would joke around and play and have fun, but he was always very serious beneath, steady and thoughtful.” He has a clear memory of the day Kerry rang to say that he was leaving to fight in Vietnam. “He phoned to say goodbye; we were all very anxious for him,” he says.

By this time Lalonde was already busy launching his own career in public life. As leader of the Sorbonne student union, he orchestrated one of the sit-ins that led to the nationwide 1968 demonstrations, and for a while he was at the epicenter of the social revolution in France. After graduating, he took his protest skills to America, where he worked with Friends of the Earth, advising them how to organize shock protests. He was with the vanguard of campaigners against nuclear testing in the Pacific; later he sacrificed his extreme positions to accept the post of environment minister with François Mitterrand’s government, and then, when he resigned, devoted himself to running a national Green party, Génération Ecologie.

His conventional political career was always halfhearted. “I don’t like politicians and I don’t like politics,” he says. “Politics is not about the truth, it’s about winning.” He felt that he had to join the game in order to push forward his environmental agenda, but he abandoned national campaigning in the mid-’90s to focus on a collection of other interests — his concern for women’s rights in the Middle East and his mission to plant more pistachio trees in the dry wilds of Afghanistan. He is as passionate about Afghanistan as he is about the environment, and in 1999, after a trip to the country to meet now-dead Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masood, went so far as to call the White House to warn it about the threat posed by al-Qaida. Perhaps bemused by this panicky call from the mayor of Saint-Briac, the White House did nothing: “Nobody listened to me.”

Lalonde’s responsibilities as mayor occupy only two days a week; the rest of the time he spends in Paris working as an environmental consultant. But another of his obsessions is France’s troubled relationship with America. The Democrats are wrong to be so afraid of him, because he is one of France’s few self-confessed Americophiles. He was one of a tiny minority in France to believe that the American campaign in Iraq was wise (although he now thinks with hindsight he might have been “a little betrayed” by the Bush administration), and he is as furious at the French for their hostility to America as he is depressed by the current U.S. distaste for France.

“It’s politically correct in France to challenge America, or to say that Americans are just all hamburger-eaters,” he says. He hopes his cousin will improve relations if he comes to power. “France should not lead an anti-American crusade; it’s stupid. We need America’s leadership, but only one that’s based on excellence — not on pure might and pure force. We are allies. We are the same civilization. We need them.”

It has been 20 years since Kerry last made it back to the beaches where he spent his childhood summers, but he and Lalonde meet intermittently when one or the other passes through Washington or Paris. Many of the other clan members frequently gather in Saint-Briac for reunions, and a family newsletter is sent out regularly. Despite the official nervousness at the French mayor’s presence at the Democratic Convention, Kerry welcomed him with affection.

Lalonde was a close follower of the Democratic movement long before Kerry became its candidate. He advised Al Gore on environmental issues in an informal way during his campaign in 2000. Kerry shares some of his environmental concerns, and Lalonde is confident that he will get the U.S. to sign the Kyoto convention (which both cousins helped negotiate). He says he won’t go out to help Kerry on environmental policy or lobby him on green issues if he is victorious, commenting: “I think the truth is that a Frenchman cannot influence anything of a foreign country’s policy because it doesn’t work like that.”

But Lalonde is not ready to congratulate Kerry just yet. “Let’s wait until he’s elected before getting too excited. I also stood for the presidency. There was nothing to be proud about there.”

Pascal Houzelot, the station’s founder and president, said the country was ready for the channel. “Pink is coming at the right moment. There’s been a real change in mentality. We’ve seen society change, we’ve seen the law change … Gays in France have gone from the era of tolerance to the era of legality, which simply means equality.”

The channel’s creation has been met with enthusiasm in the French press. Gay rights have been hovering at the top of the French political agenda for months.

But Pink TV’s backers are keen to stress it will not be a ghetto station, nor particularly militant in tone. Its target is France’s 3.5 million gays and lesbians — between 7 percent and 8 percent of the population, according to the channel’s figures. But for commercial reasons it hopes to attract a large number of straight viewers to pay the 9-euro monthly subscription fee, too.

Sports will be presented by a transgender newsreader in a miniskirt, who admits a fondness for obscure sports such as underwater hockey. But the station will also offer Japanese manga cartoons, documentaries on subjects like being gay in Africa, and debates and interviews presented by one of the country’s most popular broadcasters, Claire Chazal.

Pink TV will be reshowing old episodes of Channel 4′s “So Graham Norton,” as well as the series “Queer as Folk,” “Tipping the Velvet” and “French and Saunders.”

The station’s financial backers hope advertisers will be eager to cash in on the power of the pink euro, but it is not clear whether their optimism is well founded. Libération reported yesterday there was a shyness on the part of large advertisers to come forward.

The only two comparable channels, Italy’s Gay TV, launched in 2002, and Pridevision, established in Canada in 2001, are both struggling.

Houzelot believes that porn films broadcast after midnight four times a week will help make things work commercially. “Porn on Pink is editorially the right decision and economically necessary,” he said, estimating that of the 180,000-odd expected subscribers, 100,000 would come for the porn.

Muslims who campaigned fiercely earlier this year made no attempt to organize resistance. Schools in suburbs of Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Lille that had reported dozens of head scarves last year saw few or none yesterday. “We’re telling girls not to defy the state,” said Fouad Alaoui of the Union of French Islamic Organizations, before leaving for Baghdad to try to free the hostages. “They should make their schooling the priority.”

Some girls arrived at school in head scarves but then took them off. “I’ll take it off when I get inside,” Mounana Ouliat told reporters as she walked toward her Marseille lycée. “I have to get an education.” At a school outside Lille, one girl, Asma, said the law was unfair but she would remove her scarf. “It will feel bizarre, wrong even, but I have no choice,” she said. “If I want to become someone in this society I have to pass exams.” One school north of Paris that last year had 52 pupils with head scarves had none yesterday.

Education Minister Francois Fillon had ruled that all girls would be admitted on the first day of the term, but those who defied the ban would be invited for a “dialogue” that could last more than a week; only then would refuseniks face expulsion.

The only city to report a protest was Strasbourg. At the Marc Bloch lycée, four girls were placed in a classroom alone and told discussions on their future would begin next week, a pupil said.

The law enjoys broad support in France, where it is seen as the best guarantee of equality and freedom for all. Turkey, which models itself on French republican ideals, had a similar scarf ban in higher education upheld at the European Court of Human Rights in June.

The director of their secondary school in the suburbs of Strasbourg is under instructions to summon immediately any pupil found flouting the law.

Schoolgirls who arrive wearing the headscarf will be sent home, and repeated breaches will result in expulsion.

Politicians insist that they will enforce the law, despite the demands of the Islamic Army of Iraq, which has transformed this already controversial subject into a question of life and death, threatening to kill two French journalists unless the legislation is revoked.

Given the sensitivity of the issue, many Muslim organisations which have previously campaigned against the law have called for calm. They are keen to avoid intensifying French antipathy to the country’s five million Muslims by appearing to sympathise with the demands of extremists.

Dozens of pupils are nevertheless thought to be planning to arrive at school this morning wearing the veil.

“Imagine how you would feel if the government passed a law telling you not to wear trousers to school,” Samia, 17, who declined to give her surname, said. “For me, this is both an issue of religious conviction and of modesty.”

She is frustrated by the way the legislation seems aimed at Muslims. “A small cross, which is what most Catholics wear, counts as a discreet sign of faith. A headscarf doesn’t. I don’t feel as if we’re being treated equally,” she said. “It’s a shame that I have to spoil my good academic record because of my religion.”

Even before the hostage crisis, the debate split France in surprising ways. Some prominent Muslims supported the law as a way of boosting integration; anti-racism organisa- tions stressed the importance of secularism in school, and feminist groups approved the ban on a symbol of repression. Others saw it as an example of religious intolerance, an abuse of human rights and an attack on the Muslim population.

Critics say that the legislation threatens to increase tension. Until now, individual schools have had discretion in enforcing France’s secular principle.

But just as the Qur’an is open to interpretation on whether the veil is an essential element of religious practice, France’s new law appears susceptible to a variety of interpretations.

A telephone hotline has been set up by Muslim groups in Strasbourg , offering advice on how to exploit loopholes in the legislation.

Volunteers explain that pupils should be able to get away with wearing relatively small handkerchieves over their hair.

“We’ve had calls from about 40 girls who are undecided. They are anxious about having to make a choice between their education and their religion,” said Nora Tarifoult, one of the women running the call centre.

The growing trend for the veil was not, she insisted, a reflection of rising radicalism, but simply a sign that second generation immigrants were more confident about displaying their religion.

Expulsion remains an unlikely outcome for Samia and her sister because both are prepared to compromise. “If the director of the school tells me to wear a beret, I’ll wear a beret instead,” Samia said.