The French Formula (LSD, #3)

9. Lady Marmalade

Lady Marmalade

The Shopping Trolley Racing is followed by a short commercial break of one hundred minutes. While we enjoy dinner, the organization cleans up the super-shopping-market-mess and prepares for the second event of this Monday: Hide-and-Seek.

The first Friday, full of Free Kicks, was a warming-up, to tease the continent. Last weekend featured one event per day because audience building is a slow process. But from now on, the entire week until Saturday, we have to attend a double program, two Games per day.

The mega supermarket is also the perfect location for today's second event, Hide-and-Seek, especially for the youngest children (they broadcast it when most children should be in bed, but nobody thought about that). On the tones of the official European Games hymn, fifty children, each dressed in a T-shirt with the national flag of hor country, line up in front of the entrance. A man with a microphone calls their names, one by one, in alphabetic order of their country. Every child receives hor five seconds of glory and hor face in the living room of 750 million spectators. The man with the microphone explains the rules: the children hide in the supermarket (the camera won't show the inside of the shop) while everyone in Europe counts to 100. Then the seeker will go in and try to find the kids. The last one found will win the gold medal. The countdown starts... NOW!

The children run away and the camera switches to a black caravan with painted windows. Slowly, the shot moves inside, to get a flash of the face of the seeker, an amiable man with black hair and a moustache, who smiles and waves at the camera. The voice-over of the man with the mike (let's call him Mike) tells us this is Marc. Marc is a specialist in this game. Marc has been training Hide-and-Seek since he was eight years old. There's absolutely nothing in the world Marc likes better than playing Hide-and-Seek. Marc kills the time of the countdown clock by showing carton signs with important messages, like "Crappy meal is the best breakfast for children" and "MacAbre, the favourite hamburger restaurant of every kid in Europe".

Finally, the final starts: "NINETY-FIVE — NINETY-SIX — NINETY-SEVEN — NINETY-EIGHT — NINETY-NINE — ONE HUNDRED, I'M COMING!"

The camera follows Marc. Marc steps out of his blinded caravan, crosses the car park and enters the supermarket. He looks left, he looks right, and starts his search at the spinach section (children always hide where you least expect them). Then he combs the coffee corner, ferrets around in the frozen fish, explores the empty holes in the Emmentaler, searches the sweets stand, looks behind the loaves, peers under the pears, runs around the refreshments... but all he finds are a few empty cartons in front of the freezers. The ice creams in the cartons disappeared as mysteriously as those fifty children.

All the time, we see nothing else but Marc in front of the camera. Everyone wonders: are these children so good, or is Marc so bad?

Mike with the mike voices-over the answer to our question: "Are all those children so good? Or is Marc so bad? The answer is: Marc is bad. Marc is convicted awful. You can't even IMAGINE how bad Marc is. His full name is Marc Dutroux. He's a rapist and a murderer of children. This is not a game. It's serious. This is about missing children. We want you to realise how many children, every day, are the victim of parents with other priorities than the safety of their kids. Can you take one of those milk bricks out of the freezer and show it to our camera, Marc?"

To my surprise, Marc doesn't show us the side with the brand name, but the backside, where we can see a photo of Madeleine McCann, who's been missing since the 24th of April 2007. Marc takes another brick. The camera tells us the boy in the photo is Yéremi Vargaz, who's been missing since the 10th of March 2007. Marc's smile is the most uncalled-for ever.

"What's this?", I whisper to Doc. He puts his finger on his lips to make me shut up, and points to the screen: «Mike will explain.»

"We want you to take your mobile phone, your tablet, or your computer. Google «Amber Alert». This effective system works in the United States, but here in Europe we hardly know it exists. Tonight, we're looking for your attention, for your cooperation. We don't want these children to keep hiding forever. We want them to be found. And YOU can make it happen. If you want to see your children again, you need to act. Now. All of you. Download the Amber Alert Europe app. Go to the missingchildreneurope.eu website and get involved. We started this show with fifty children, one from each country in Europe. The truth is horrible: during the commercial break before the start of this program, 50 parents in the European Union reported 50 missing children. That's one child every two minutes. While you were looking for the best deal and the highest discount, 50 children disappeared. You did nothing. This is the result."