By Fernande Grudet's own account, the clients at her French brothel included John F. Kennedy, the Shah of Iran, Moammar Gadhafi, Moshe Dayan, Marc Chagall, Rex Harrison, Marlon Brando and King Hussein of Jordan, who, she said, once told one of her girls: "You and I are in the same business. We have to smile even when we don't feel like it." Grudet, known professionally as Madame Claude, claimed JFK came to her with a special request – he wanted a look-alike of his wife, Jacqueline, "but hot."

"Madame Claude" operated a deluxe call-girl ring in Paris in the 1960s and '70s that attracted the patronage of world leaders, business executives and playboys and made her a byword for sophisticated sex.

A woman of modest background from the Anjou region, she arrived in Paris in the 1950s and, after working a series of menial jobs, one of which may have been selling herself on the streets, she decided that the managerial side of the sex business suited her talents. "Two things in life sell," she once declared. "Food and sex. And I was not meant to be a chef."

Precisely how she built her business remains a mystery, despite two memoirs abrim with uncheckable stories. But build it she did, grooming a finishing school's worth of beautiful young women, many of them foreign, from the fringes of the film and fashion worlds, with a sprinkling of students looking for extra cash and housewives looking for adventure, in the manner of Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour.

Grudet liked to call her charges "swans", clients referred to them as "Claude girls." The term prostitute, she once said, "was revolting and denigrating." She was choosy: Only one in 20 candidates made the grade. Requirements included beauty — plastic surgery could be arranged — poise and a familiarity with history, literature and current events. Also, talent in bed. This was assessed by Grudet's testers, male acquaintances who took candidates for a trial run and reported back to her.