A 28-year-old man has been jailed for four months for slapping French President Emmanuel Macron in the face.

Damien Tarel was quickly arrested after the swipe that caught Mr Macron’s left cheek with an audible thwack on Tuesday, as the French leader was greeting a crowd.

The court in the south-eastern city of Valence convicted Tarel on Thursday on a charge of violence against a person invested with public authority.

He was sentenced to four months in prison and given an additional 14-month suspended sentence, and also banned from ever holding public office and from owning weapons for five years.

Tarel described himself as a right-wing or extreme-right “patriot” and member of the yellow vest economic protest movement. He shouted a centuries-old royalist war cry as he hit Mr Macron.