Joke on Palin Again As She Falls for Fake Sarkozy Call

Maybe Sarah Palin should have caught on when the caller purporting to be Nicolas Sarkozy told her he could see Belgium from the Elysée Palace.

But the Republicans' vice-presidential candidate remained blissfully unaware during the six-minute conversation with a Montreal comedian that she was the victim of a prank - even after the fake Sarkozy said his wife, Carla Bruni, was hot in bed, and slipped in a line in French about how fun it was to kill baby seals.

The caller, Marc-Antoine Audette, was one half of a comedic duo called the Masked Avengers. Audette described his call with Palin as his greatest triumph.

The prank on one of the most heavily protected personalities in US politics was an instant internet sensation in the final hours of the presidential campaign.

It also overshadowed what John McCain had orchestrated as his comedic moment - an appearance on Saturday Night Live with his wife, Cindy. McCain used his turn to try to make light of Obama's dominance of television advertising, saying his campaign only had the money to appear on the shopping channel - where his wife displayed campaign jewelery.

"I'm a true maverick - a Republican without money," he joked. He went on to lay out a number of strategies for trying to overcome Barack Obama's lead including one he called "Sad Grandpa".

"That's where I get on TV and go, 'Come on, Obama's gonna have plenty of chances to be president. It's my turn'," he said. But instead, it was Palin who got the most laughs - albeit inadvertently. The telephone call got off to an auspicious start.

Palin, evidently thrilled to take what she had been told by aides was a call from the French leader, told the faux Sarkozy within a matter of seconds that she loved him. She did her best to keep that love alive, even when the conversation took an increasingly bizarre turn. When her caller pointed out the two have a lot in common "except from my house I can see Belgium", Palin cheerfully responded: "Well, see, we're right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with."

When her caller mentioned his love of hunting, Palin instantly invited him on a hunting trip. "We can have a lot of fun together while we're getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone," she said. "Exactly," the caller responded. "We could go try hunting by helicopter like you did."

He added in French that the pair could also go out and kill baby seals. Switching to English the caller added: "I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun." The exchange was littered with other clues. The fake Sarkozy mentioned an adviser called Johnny Hallyday who was in contact with the McCain campaign. Palin, who has made much of her contacts with Canadian officials in her negotiations over an oil pipeline through Alaska, might well have been expected to catch on when the caller got the name of Canada's prime minister wrong, substituting that of a singer.

Or when he added that Bruni was jealous of Palin. But the vice-presidential candidate evidently missed those cues - or at least was too polite to raise objections even when her caller extravagantly praised a porn film about her.

In interviews at the weekend, Audette said it had taken five days to get clearance from Palin's communications team as well as the Secret Service for the phone call.

"I wanted to see how she was on an intellectual level," he told the Canadian Press. "You can see that she's, well, not really brilliant."