Elysée beckons at last for France's 'Mr Wobbly Man': Francois Hollande

In a few hours' time, Francois Hollande will know if he has fulfilled the ambition that has smouldered in him since he was a schoolboy - or whether, not for the first time, he has been dramatically thwarted.

Asked, aged 15, what he wanted to be in life, the earnest adolescent replied, "President of the Republic".

He was not smiling, nor was he joking.

Hollande has spent 42 years trying. His career as a civil servant, a councillor, a technocrat, a Socialist Party apparatchik and MP has been the classic route to the ultimate position of head of the French state. He has all the qualifications, if little of the experience, to be president.

And yet, if he snatches the keys to the Elysee Palace in today's (Sunday's) closely contested presidential election, forcing Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy back into ordinary life, Hollande will have accomplished his dream and will have finally ended the ill-fortune that has dogged his entire political career.

For less well known than Hollande's overt ambition is the fact that his attempts to reach his goal have been thwarted at almost every turn over the last three decades in politics, during which he has been ignored, sidelined, passed over, betrayed and insulted - even, on occasions, by those closest to him. At no time was this more humiliating than in the run-up to the 2007 presidential election, when his own partner Segolene Royal, mother of his four children, effectively stabbed him in the back.

Since graduating from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the elite civil service college, there had been a tacit agreement between the power couple that Hollande would be the one to bid for the ultimate office in France.

In the event, Miss Royal, riding what turned out to be an illusory wave of popularity, did not step aside as Hollande had assumed she would. (Maybe because he was reportedly already involved with the woman now at his side, the journalist Valerie Trierweiler.)

Even his children took their mother's side as, five years ago, Miss Royal stood - unsuccessfully - against Sarkozy and Hollande was shuffled off to a political wilderness.

But each time he has suffered defeats and disappointments, Hollande has bounced back, and done so with a smile. His ability to keep calm and carry on has earned him the nickname "Monsieur Culbuto", the Wobbly Man character in the children's series Noddy, who always rights himself after being pushed over. It is one name among many thrown his way, some less flattering than others: Flanby, after a jelly-like French pudding for his perceived spinelessness; the Interloper, for his ability to insinuate himself into positions of influence; and even the politically incorrect the Chinaman, by enemies who claim he can "kill with a smile".

His biographer, Serge Raffy, editor of the Nouvel Observateur magazine describes him as the "Saint Bernard of politics... always ready to offer his flask to the traitors".

Raffy writes: "Hollande preaches reconciliation. To those who beg him to play the executioner to give the impression he's a real leader, as the French like, he replies that he is faithful to his word."

Until last year, the epithet Also Ran might also have applied. Even though he had reiterated his ambition to be come French president, it was widely accepted that the Socialist Party would select Dominique Strauss-Kahn to run against Sarkozy.

But when Strauss-Kahn's political hopes were destroyed last May when he faced charges - since dropped - of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid, Hollande stepped into the breach.

The final opinion polls predicted victory for him in today's run-off, by 52% to 48%, but Hollande knows better than to underestimate Sarkozy's ability to pull an unexpected rabbit out of the electoral hat, given the fickle nature of French elections. In the past week, the gap between them has narrowed from 10 to four percentage points, a sign that there is still no certainty.

Even as his supporters were dusting off the bunting, Hollande warned on Friday night they should not "commit the error of believing it's a foregone conclusion".

His caution is born of bitter experience. The young Francois Hollande was devastated when his authoritarian father, an ear, nose and throat specialist who had twice stood as a far-Right candidate in local elections, first sent his rebellious older brother Philippe away to boarding school. He then uprooted the family from the bucolic Normandy village of Bois-Guillaume, near Rouen, to the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine - throwing away Francois's favourite Dinky cars and toy soldiers in the move.

Francois knew nobody in Paris, but he was a brilliant student and attended elite colleges, first the Institute of Political Sciences (Sciences-Po), then ENA. In the holidays, he and friends would travel, often to England where he once spent the night in a Hastings telephone box.

Raffy says the young Hollande was troubled by his short, stocky and bespectacled physical appearance, but made up for it by refining a caustic wit and humour and a good line in self-deprecation.

"In love and with the girls, it's like with English, I'm in the mediocre category," Hollande would repeat.

After graduating from ENA with distinction, Hollande was set up for a career as a civil servant and, if he wished, in politics. His first job was at the state audit office, then as a lecturer at Sciences-Po.

In the 1970s, he threw his weight behind the first Socialist president Francois Mitterrand and had hoped for a junior minister's post when Mitterrand was elected in 1981. Hollande was disappointed. Later he became an acolyte of Jacques Delors, another presidential hopeful until he abandoned France to become head of the European Union. Hollande was again disappointed.

After becoming right-hand man to Lionel Jospin, the Socialist prime minister, he was once again overlooked for ministerial jobs and sidelined.

When Jospin was knocked out of the first round of the 2002 presidential elections by the far-right's Jean-Marie Le Pen, however, it was Hollande, then secretary general of the Socialist Party, who put the squabbling French Left back together.

"Throughout his career, Francois Hollande ploughed his furrow behind paternal figures, Mitterrand, Delors, Jospin. Suddenly he was an orphan," writes Raffy.

"He was alone faced with his destiny and seemed disarmed, a little lost, incapable of making the necessary step to propel him into the category of the leader of the tribe."

Then came 2007 and the rise of Segolene. "As usual, he [Hollande] shrugged and waited for better days," writes Raffy.

Hollande's response during the many career lows was to return to his roots and spend time in his constituency in the Correze, central France. In doing so, he has created an unusually strong popular power base. In his constituency of Tulle, even those who do not agree with him talk of him with genuine admiration.

Alain Albinet, of the local newspaper, La Montagne, said: "It's nothing to do with ideology it's about the man, the human. He won over the loyalty of the people by being here, being accessible and defending local interests."

For many in Hollande's position, winning power would be payback time, but this is not his style. In the past he has brought back people who have stabbed him in the back, even when there was a risk they would do so again.

He has worked hard to unify the Socialist Party and in any case, is not given to retribution or revenge. He prefers to mollify and neutralise, much to the irritation of colleagues. All this, however, depends on him winning.

Yesterday morning Hollande was once again in the weekly market at Tulle, with Trierweiler, shaking hands, meeting the people. Sarkozy was reported to be with his wife and their six-month-old daughter Giulia.

And later today Francois Hollande will know if he has finally fulfilled his teenage dream by becoming the 24th president of the republic.