By Astrid Wendlandt
PARIS (Reuters) - A video of French President NicolasSarkozy telling a bystander to "get lost" has become a hit onthe Internet.
Sarkozy was filmed by a journalist from the daily LeParisien on a walkabout at the annual farm fair in Paris onSaturday.
Sarkozy offered his hand to a man who said: "Don't touchme, you are soiling me." In reply, Sarkozy said, withoutdropping his smile: "Get lost, dumb ass."
The video was posted on Le Parisien's websitewww.leparisien.fr.on and by midday on Sunday it had been seenby more than 350,000 people, a spokeswoman for the newspapersaid.
"It has created quite a controversy," she said. The videois the first to come up when searching for Sarkozy onDailymotion and YouTube.
Sarkozy's popularity ratings are in freefall and hishands-on style of government is attracting growing criticism.
In November, Sarkozy had a heated exchange with fishermenduring protests against rising fuel costs. The presidentchallenged a fisherman who had insulted him.
"Come down and say that," Sarkozy, elected in May, wasquoted as saying. "Don't think that by insulting me you willsolve fishermen's problems."
After the incident, Sarkozy said he refused to have insultshurled at him and would only accept a dialogue between"civilized people."
Francois Hollande, head of the Socialist party, saidSarkozy was not behaving like a head of state and called on himto improve his behaviour.
"One should not get into a brawl...One does not call down afisherman or a worker to explain what he said, one does not getinto a fight with someone who does not want to shake yourhand," Hollande said on pay-TV channel Canal plus.
Sarkozy's spokesman, David Martinon, declined to comment onthe fair incident.
The number of people satisfied with the president fell 9percentage points in a month to 38 percent, according to anIfop poll in the Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
(Editing by Robert Woodward)