We celebrate the flamboyant backline that stole the show in the 1980s glory days of Racing Club de France.

Long before Max Guazzini unveiled that shirt, a club from the other side of Paris made the colour pink its own and brought razzmatazz to French rugby when Stade Francais' dancing girls were still in nappies.

Until the resurgence of Stade Francais in the 1990s, there was only one big club in Paris - Racing Club de France. After winning the first ever French Championship in 1892, Racing bagged three more titles before slipping into apparently permanent obscurity in the mid-1990s.

Racing collected their last Bouclier de Brennus in 1990, but the club's most recent golden age will be remembered not for their breathlessly exciting style of play, but for the bizarre activities of five of the club's back line, collectively known as 'le Show-Bizz'.

Together, the unpredictable fivesome earned fame (and an equal measure of notoriety) by - as they saw it - bringing a bit of fun to a game that had got a little too serious in France. Later on, they converted that fame into money by launching a fashion house that is ubiquitous in France's rugby capitals and beyond.

Hat's entertainment
Legend has it that the five - Franck Mesnel, Eric Blank, Jean-Baptiste Lafond, Yvon Rousset and Philippe Guillard - formed le Show-Bizz at an Alpine training camp on New Year's Eve 1987. Ten days later the five took to the field at Bayonne's Stade Jean-Dauger wearing traditional Basque berets. Shockingly, the five played the whole 80 minutes wearing the caps.

"We were always looking for a way to express our idea that the best French rugby combines rigour and fantasy," Mesnel told Donald McRae in the book Winter Colours. "Just because you play well you don't have to be serious all the time. Yes, French people have always played with excitement but, sometimes, there is too much gravity.

"I think we maybe started our jokes because, as rugby players, we were lost in Paris. You know Paris - it feels like it is too important to give up its cultural identity to a game like rugby. Sometimes it felt like there were more of us players than spectators. So we though, well, let's entertain ourselves while saying something about our rugby culture."

The wearing of berets had actually been banned by the French Rugby Federation in the early 20th century after one player threw his hat to another player as a diversion tactic, while keeping the ball in his hand. But, according to Mesnel, the Basque public loved the gesture.

"The rugby federation and the public took the most offence," says Mesnel. "But in rugby, as in life, when you have a strong idea you almost have to be excessive. You have to push it to the limits. The press and the public understood this. They admired our spirit."

But didn't they fear reprisals from a proud public who thought these parisian upstarts were simply insulting their traditions?

"The beret belongs to the Basque people. That is its origin. So there was some hazard. They could have thought we were disrespectful, but the way we wore those berets and the way we played, the crowd could tell we had no aggression towards them or the beret.

"At the end we threw our berets into the home crowd in acknowledgment that, as a symbol, the beret belonged to them. Their response? Magnificent!"

No Bizzness like...
But les Show-Bizz - the name was apparently given to the group by the press due to their movie-star lifestyles and penchant for Paris nightlife, but there seems to be no explanation for the extra 'z' - didn't stop there. By April, Racing Club had battled their way through to the quarter-finals of the championship, where they came up against the no-nonsense hardmen of Brive. Seeking "elegant dress for the occasion", Mesnel & Co ran out wearing their club blazers, and, having dispatched of les correzins, played the mighty Toulouse in the semi-final a week later wearing old-fashioned knee-length bermuda shorts.

The final, against Toulon, saw the birth of another legend - the pink bow tie. With their Racing shirts buttoned up to the collars, les Show-Bizz ran out with the famous 'nœuds papillons roses' that would become the symbol of the set.

They lost 15-12 to the mediterraneans, but the japes didn't end there. At the height of AIDS-mania, Lafond played one game wearing a plastic hat to promote condom use, some players entered the stadium on bicycles and, while their colleagues in the forwards were going through their pre-match drills, les Show-Bizz sat on the turf and enjoyed a hand of cards.

In April 1988 the five played at Toulouse wearing black face paint, officially to celebrate the birthday of black teammate Vincent Lelano, but also allegedly to counter racist abuse directed at the player (questionably nicknamed Minorité).

In 1988 the gang released a pop single, and early in 1989 turned up wearing flesh-toned skull caps in 'tribute' to their shaven headed opponent (and international team-mate) Didier Camberabero. They even celebrated the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in style, playing a game in April wearing the striped trousers and red phrygian caps of the sans-culottes.

In the pink
But the defining moment for les Show-Bizz came 12 months later, as the club returned to Parc des Princes for their second final, this time against Agen - home club of all-powerful - and reportedly unimpressed - French Rugby Federation president Albert Ferrasse. This time the entire Racing team donned the pink bow ties, even deigning to present one to the guest of honour, French president Francois Mitterand, before kick-off.

At half-time, with an attritional match tied at three-all, the teams gathered for their orange slices and team talks. Except there was no Outspan for the Racingmen. Yvon Rousset, who was out injured, strolled out from the dugout wearing a waiter's jacket and carrying a tray of champagne and glasses. Perhaps baffled by this, Agen could only drag the game into extra time with a late penalty, and were outclassed in the prologations as Racing triumphed 22-12 and hoist the Bouclier de Brennus for the first time since 1959.

But the story of le Show-Bizz doesn't end there. Late in 1987, the five had set up the Eden Park sportswear company, which, with the pink bow tie as its logo, produced clothing that , like the gang of five, mixed the rigour of rugby with a bit of unexpected glamour. More than 20 years on, Eden Park - named after the Auckland stadium in which Mesnel, Blanc and Lafond contested the 1987 World Cup final - has stores all over France and even as far afield as Dubai and Hong Kong, and recorded a turnover of €46m in 2006.

Naturally the colours pink, black and sky blue feature prominently in their pricey lines of polos, jackets, shirts, ties and rugby jerseys, as well as on the labels of their own brand of champagne. And Mesnel and Blanc - now brothers-in-law - are still in charge of the firm from its Montparnasse head office; as Blanc is also Racing-Metro's general manager, the company is directly involved in the affairs of the club as it re-enters the big time.

Ou sont-ils maintenent?
With their talent for self promotion, the others haven't fared badly either. Rousset is events and conferences director for Eden Park, Guillard is a journalist and screenwriter, and like Mesnel himself is a regular on French television. Lafond, however, who left Racing to join the Stade Francais revolution in 1993, appears to have vanished off the radar.

They can also claim to have inspired Max Guazzini's Stade Francais revolution - dancing girls, pink shirts, flowers, flags and all. Now the club's challenge is to win support in a city that hasn't been home to two top-flight clubs for almost 100 years. But with Stade Francais now pulling almost 80,000 people into the Stade de France on a regular basis, they may find winning over France was a lot easier than winning over Paris.

"Everyone else in French rugby hated Racing. They hate us because we were from Paris," Mesnel reminisces.

"That's rugby, that's people! What can you do? In rugby, because we are Parisians, we are all dogs! We are all homosexuals! This is very amusing to us, and as students we have many cultural and artistic interests so we decide to play with this joke. If we are called the homosexuals of French rugby we will be happy! We will laugh! We will wear our pink bow-ties!"