Wife TV clip poses new problems for Fillon

French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon was fighting to keep his campaign alive Thursday as a TV interview with his wife added fuel to a fake job scandal and some members of his party openly plotted to replace him.
One of France's main investigative news programmes, Envoye Special, is set to air previously unseen footage on Thursday evening of Fillon's Welsh-born wife Penelope talking to a journalist in 2007.
Envoye Special presenter Elise Lucet said that "several interesting remarks" had been found in the footage, including that Penelope had never - contrary to recent revelations - acted as her husband's assistant.
Penelope Fillon's lawyer, Pierre Cornut-Gentille, insisted the remarks contained in an interview for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper had been "taken out of context."
The footage has not been broadcast or seen by other media, including AFP. Fillon, a conservative, had been leading the election race until the Canard Enchaine newspaper reported that his wife earned 830,000 euros ($900,000) as a parliamentary assistant over more than a decade - despite no-one recalling her ever working at the National Assembly.
A poll on Wednesday showed Fillon would crash out in the first round of the election in April behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen and 39-year-old centrist Emmanuel Macron, who is rising fast in the polls. The poll showed Macron easily defeating Le Pen in a May runoff.
On Thursday, Fillon ploughed on with his campaign, visiting a village on the Belgian border, where he refused to answer questions on "Penelopegate" as the French media have dubbed it.
The scandal has dismayed rightwing voters, who see the election as theirs to lose after five years of troubled Socialist rule.
"It's scandalous that his wife received such huge sums of money," Anne Serise-Dupuis, a 66-year-old psychiatrist said in the western city of Bordeaux. "He should withdraw. He has been disqualified," she said.