French leader has sense of humour failure at teen's cheeky greeting

A teenager who made the mistake of addressing Emmanuel Macron in a casual way was dressed down by the French President.

The teen asked 'Ca va manu?' when he met the President - meaning "how's it going man?"

Thousands were at a ceremony marking the 78th anniversary of late French General Charles de Gaulle's resistance call of June 18, 1940, AFP reports.

The boy got a sharp response from the 40-year-old.

"No, you can't do that, no, no, no, no," Macron told him during the visit to the Mont Valerien fort near Paris, where hundreds of French Resistance members were executed during World War II.

"Sorry, Mr President," the teen replied.

But Macron carried on.

"You're here, at an official ceremony and you should behave. You can play the fool but today it's the Marseillaise, the Chant des Partisans (French Resistance song), so you call me 'Mister President' or 'Sir'. Okay? There you go."

Macron told the teen, who had begun by singing a few lines from the Socialist anthem The Internationale - a dig at the President's pro-business reforms - to "do things in the right order".

"The day you want to start a revolution you study first in order to obtain a degree and feed yourself, okay? And then you can lecture others," he said.