“The serenity was gone, what with the affair kicking off again this weekend,” BFM-TV’s boss Guillaume Dubois told AFP of the decision to drop Anne Sinclair, who took part in April 22 first round coverage as a consultant.

“It was better for everyone for her not to be present on Sunday evening, in the interest of both parties,” Dubois said ahead of the May 6 run-off.

Fallen IMF boss Strauss-Kahn, himself once tipped to win France’s presidential vote, embarrassed the Socialist party with the publication over the weekend of his allegation that Nicolas Sarkozy orchestrated his downfall.

He was also criticised from within his party for attending a Socialist lawmaker’s birthday at the height of the second-round presidential campaign pitting Socialist Francois Hollande against incumbent Sarkozy.

Sinclair is also the editorial director of the Huffington Post’s French website.

“Faced with the emotive and irrational climate of the second round campaign, particularly over the last week, it has been jointly decided to push this collaboration back,” Huffington Post France’s editor Paul Ackermann said.

Strauss-Kahn had been favoured to win the vote until May last year, when he was arrested in New York and accused of sexually assaulting hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo.

The charges were later dropped but a New York judge ruled on Tuesday that he should face a civil case brought by Diallo.