The first time he must have been seven or eight years old, maybe.
Christian Jacob no longer really knows.
There remains a memory of "stifling" heat, and fatigue.
"For a kid, at that age, it's exhausting."
The Republican president isn't seven years old (he's 61), but since then he's hardly ever missed a single Agricultural Show.
Son of farmers, having himself accepted the vocation as an inheritance, he was very involved in agricultural unionism.
Then he became a five-star guide for any politician who was keen to rub shoulders with this world which, two weeks a year, comes to remember the good memories of urbanites and circles of power.
But not this year, Covid-19 obliges.
This will perhaps be the third or fourth time that he has not walked the aisles of the living room, as in that winter of 1979 when, doing military service in the forest of Fontainebleau, he was refused permission.
As a teenager in the 70s, he went to Porte de Versailles in a gang, with the "friends" of the agricultural school, to find the novelties of agricultural machinery, like a good fan of the tractor and the combine harvester, which each year undergo a little more electronic tuning.
“We spot them, young people from agricultural high schools.
They are in groups, with bags of leaflets on the latest innovations.
And from time to time, they abuse the beer a bit, ”laughs Jacob.
A spectator, he then becomes an actor: a farmer at 22 - dairy cows and cereals in Seine-et-Marne, like his father.
Jacob remembers the clash of two worlds, rural and urban.
"The Parisians annoy you ... there is a caricature of the city dweller, who behaves with animals as with dogs or living cats", jokes the deputy for Seine-et-Marne, also emphasizing the importance of this moment of "pedagogy".
He will also be very involved in agricultural unionism, including two years as president of Young Farmers (1992-1994).
"We made sure that the ministers, the prime ministers were well received ... and we put a little pressure on them before, so that they avoid telling bullshit before coming," recalls the former breeder.
In the mid-90s, he ended up moving to the other side of the enclosure and enlisting in politics.
"You have to pretend to drink every time"
Chiraquien pure butter, he will be the architect of the visits of Corrézien, simmered upstream with Annie Lhéritier (chief of staff) and Claude Chirac.
“It was he who imposed the show as an obligatory passage.
He imposed a style, a proximity, ”praises Jacob, always stars in his eyes when it comes to talking about the former president.
The person did what he wanted, multiplied the "kodak click-clack", according to his expression, with children, animals.
Jacob remembers a popular ovation in February 1995 at the show, when the mayor of Paris was going to pass Edouard Balladur again in the polls.
Or this very Chiraquian trick to chain the stands, to the gastronomic pavilion, without leaving your head upside down.
“We avoided traps.
You have to pretend to drink every time, that's what Chirac did.
And we passed the cups to the security guard, who got rid of them, ”recalls the agricultural sherpa.
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Appointment "obligatory" even "caricatural" of elected officials, Jacob does not "want to imagine" that 2022 does not see the contenders for the Elysee playing elbows there.
Where politics and agriculture coexist.
His two viruses.