PARIS – Larry Flynt, the US pornography magnate, is to celebrate his 62nd birthday next week with a party in his strip club in Paris, his French public relations team said Monday.

The multi-millionaire – who gets around in a gold-plated wheelchair since being paralysed in a 1978 shooting attack by a white supremacist angry at an interracial spread in his Hustler magazine – turns a year older on November 1.

There was no word from the publicists as to whether Flynt chose the Paris venue to get away from the frenzy surrounding the November 2 US presidential election.

Flynt has maintained a harsh campaign against current President George W. Bush ever since making a failed run for the California governorship, which former actor Arnold Schwarzenegger ended up winning last year. As well as overseeing an expanding empire of strip clubs in North America and Europe, Flynt has just brought out his third book, titled “Sex, Lies and Politics – the Naked Truth”. Inside he rages against what he sees as Bush’s incompetence.