Impolitesse revisited

A good debate is just taking shape over at my Guardian Comment is Free slot, where I have returned to a favoured theme of rudeness and the French. Have your say, there or here.


 

Marseille: easy to get lost, harder to be told to Get Lost - if you're polite




But those who have stuck with me from the Other Place, where I now languish in the sidings for archived foreign correspondents (along with, it has to be said, three valued former colleagues), will remember the impassioned discussion my thoughts on the subject aroused there.

They will also know my view that the French, by and large, get an unjustifiably bad press, accused without proper cause of being ruder than others. But then, not all the French agree with me in any case.

My occasional sparring partner Agnès Poirier thinks the French are guilty as charged. but adds that while she and her fellow Français and Françaises are rude, us Brits are hypocrites.

So when I make my case for not being beastly to the French, I am undermined by certain French people taking pride in their rudeness.

Pretty much the flip side of the debate, the subject that that got me going last time around, is the tyranny of the French insistence on a proper bonjour monsieur/madame at the start of any casual exchange.

Is it time for another discussion on that? These days, I rarely forget the need for such introductions, and I bonjoured away merrily, to good effect, a few times when I was lost in Marseille yesterday.

Mme Salut!, French but conditioned by long years spent in England, gets it wrong as often as she doesn't.

If you are far too polite to consider talking about rudeness, there is always the lure of yet another competition, over at (tonight) a somewhat jubilant Salut! Sunderland.

The core subject will be of no interest to many of you, of course, but I'd bet several of you would get the right answer to my question even without recourse to Google.

Some may even like my choice of prize - a copy of an unusual graphic novel, Alice in Sunderland, by Bryan Talbot, about which you can also read a little on that blog, and more here.

And just a few of you will take to the idea of a guest column, even though it has to be about football - note, not specifically Sunderland.

But then again.........

A sense of Libération from making ends meet

Fifteen years ago, I was sent back north by my news editor to write about a certain football team.

The team had made it to the FA Cup final from what the French rightly still call the Second Division, whatever word games the football authorities play to make it sound better.

It was the players' "open day" with the press and I think my masters vaguely expected to see a story about grasping footballers demanding money for their monosyllabic thoughts and posed pictures.

Spare some loose change, guv?
Picture: sierradelta74

Nothing of the sort happened.

As we strolled around the pitch at Roker Park, no one was out of bounds (though the better players did have queues waiting to speak to them) and nearly everyone was friendly and polite.

Since this was my team, I was happy that the club and its players were behaving impeccably - and I hope that having given their time freely, they went on to make a little from follow-up exclusives with the press and broadcasters.

Only one person, so far as I know, asked for money and that was a sports journalist who felt too grand to give a few comments to a TV crew without payment.

His request, which ensured that no interview took place, surprised me.

I have always been willing to give minor bits of help to my confrères and consoeurs on the basis that I would hope for and expect the same in return. If money is offered, as it sometimes is for radio or TV slots, that is a different matter and I am not stupid enough to refuse.

But I also remember the football hack saying something about being a freelance and that they were therefore asking for his professional services and time for nothing.

That is how it is for me in my new, changed life.

A friend asked the other day if I'd be interest in writing a weekly blog posting on the French elections for the Libération website site. "Of course," I replied, "every little helps."

I have a soft spot for Libé and was delighted when it came through its recent crisis with hopes of survival higher than for some time.

But when they got round to ringing to explain the details, they added that while they wanted the contributions, they would not be paying for them.

If I had still been working as a salaried correspondent, I might well have said yes, provided I felt I had the time to do the blog justice.

Had they offered a pittance or, say, a year's subscription, I suspect the answer would still have been yes. As a freelance, chasing whatever earnings I can, I had no hestitation in turning down the idea of adding to my workload but not my income.

Perhaps the person calling me does her job for nothing. I doubt it. Perhaps the exceedingly rich people who hold the purse strings at Libé also conduct their business lives without the least desire for remuneration. I doubt that, too.

Given the paper's links to Sartre and the Paris Spring of 1968, it is not surprising that for a long time it operated a policy of paying everyone from the cleaners to the editor the same.

Later, it dropped this lofty egalitarianism and entered the harsher world of the market economy. In 2007, I would probably have settled for the cleaner's pay.

A charming lady journalist who plans to write about me in a magazine about British expats in France told me of her dismay on being told by another UK journalist that s/he would not be interviewed for free.

Her shock was clearly genuine, and I was perfectly happy when I found I had time during a visit to Paris to meet her and answer her questions. But I was just as shocked by the suggestion that a Left-of-centre, up-the-workers kind of paper should want someone to turn in a few shifts for nowt.

Dreaming of Barnsley and the Elysée

Nothing to report today, according to page one of the newspaper in the hands of the old hack.

Not to be taken too literally........though it is my favourite lamp and I felt it had the edge on a test card.

But all my enthusiasm for blogging on a matchday Saturday is channelled elsewhere.

Normal service here will return some time on Monday, by which time - as of 8pm French time tomorrow, Sunday, to be precise - M Chirac will at last have ended his mischievous little guessing game, formally establishing himself as an imminent ex-president.

Coup de Tête pour Nice en fête

Get the idea?
Picture: cjwooduk

We hate Man United. Well I don't as it happens, but this isn't really a football posting so I'll come back to that in a minute.

Where I should start is not at the Nice carnival either, but on the Corniche, which I have just been able to enjoy for the first time since I saw Edward Fox whizzing round its perilous cliffside bends in The Day of the Jackal.

That was a long time ago and I have naturally travelled along the same coastline, from Cannes to Nice, many times since. But enjoyment of the spellbinding scenery is, on the whole, impaired when you have to take care not to drive into the sea.

So I insisted on leaving the car at Saint Raphaël and continuing to Nice by train.

Rail is easily my preferred means of transport and I know there are several spectacular train journeys in the world. But this was a real treat, from the exhilaration of racing along parallel to the Mediterranean shore to the pleasure of trundling through cuttings ablaze with mimosas.

One carnival goes rather a long way for my tastes, and I had been in Bormes-les-Mimosas only a week earlier when Bernadette Chirac opened the corso there.






But the current Nice festival does boast a number of outstanding floats representing the efforts of people from each quarter of the city, and was well worth half a day. We also found an excellent stop for lunch, the Indian lounge, run by a family from Pondichéry and now added to my short list of good French Indian restaurants.

When the procession got under way, the giant caricatures of Chirac (and Bernadette), Ségo and Sarko and the other presidential contenders were especially impressive.


And then there was Zinedine Zidane. Which brings me back to Manchester United.

That statement of hatred in my opening line is also the opening line of a refrain heard, with varying force depending on which club's supporters you are listening to, at most English football grounds.

In France, just now, they hate Man Utd, too. The French naturally prefer Arsenal in any case, given the stronger links that make them seem almost part of Ligue 1. But in normal circumstances, they also respect Man Utd for the mighty club that it is.

The new antipathy follows last week's match against Lille. Everyone by now has a view of the events involving Man Utd fans and French police, and also of Giggs's quickly taken free kick that won the game; there has been comment here as elsewhere.

But limiting myself to the free kick controversy and Lille's petulant walk-off, I couldn't help feeling, as I watched the Zidane character in the Nice carnival parade, that double standards were at play in the French reaction. Man Utd's sense of fair play has been put in question and the referee has been pilloried.

Yet all Giggs did, apparently without breaking any rule of the game, was to make the most of an advantage awarded because of some unfair play by Lille.

Why on earth should a free kick on the edge of the penalty area be delayed to the convenience of the offending team?

Even if that view is open to debate, surely we can at least agree that no verbal provocation justified Zidane's actions in the World Cup final, much as some have charitably expressed understanding of them.

Yet in Nice here was further evidence that far from being a matter of personal disgrace that also tarnished the image of an admirable French national side, Zidane's show of yobbish aggression can be seen as a source of pride.

The carnival caricature had the great man's head thrusting forward as it had towards the chest of Italy's Marco Materrazzi last July.

And the city authorities treated the crowds to repeated bursts over the sound system of that cuddly French hit, Dance of the Headbutt, glorifying the footballer's moment of madness. Without wishing to rain on the carnival, I cannot help thinking that this sends out a depressingly wrong message to youngsters who idolise great sportsmen.

Driving a Renaud to London

However many records and concert tickets Renaud shifts in his native country, he is never likely to be mobbed in Oxford Steet.

Picture: buzfoto

The guarantee that he can go about his daily business unhindered when in London has a lot to do with his decision, which Richard of Orléans will think makes him positively certifiable, to plan his future there.

We have talked quite a bit here, and in that Other Place, about the two-way flow of people between France and the UK.

Truly reliable figures seem elusive, but I think there are supposed to be around 500,000 Britons with homes in France - which many undoubtedly use for only part of the year - and perhaps 300,000 French people resident on the other side of the Channel.

Renaud's explanation, in a Paris Match interview, for deciding to move to London involves a list of qualities that some of my readers will consider as unrecognisable as he is to the average London cabbie.

"It is true that Romane (his wife and mother of their baby son Malone) adore London," he began, uncontroversially enough. "Romane, above all since she is an artiste, finds the attention of people in the street hard to take - their curiosity and fanaticism, and the amateur paparazzi with their mobile phones. Ten times more peaceful in London."

Avert your eyes, Richard. Our hero goes on to describe his love for the capital, the good citizenship of its people, their humour, the pubs.

"I love English football, English rock, English culture, English literature, the galleries, exhibitions, architecture. You don't see cops on the streets of London. Why? Because there is more civisme and more brotherliness than in Paris!"

And no, Renaud is not thinking - Johnny Hallyday style - of a more agreeable tax regime.

As a good socialist - and not even what the French like to call a caviar socialist - he insists that the more tax he pays, the happier he is, and that France's wealth tax, the ISF, is to him a gesture of solidarity.

He and Romane plan to devote most of their time, when not working, to living in London, maybe eight months a year.

They already own a small house there - "not a mansion, not a palace, honest!" - and want Malone to grow up bilingual, attending school in London (by which they may, of course, mean the Lycée Français in the Little France manor of South Ken rather than a bog standard comprehensive).

Adopting his most Ségo-like posture, Renaud adds: "I will go on paying my taxes in France even if I regret that they go on building aircraft carriers instead of crèche, schools....."

Who was it, apart from me now and again, that said French pop music doesn't travel?

Pottering about in the Guardian

First a few words of reassurance. My appearances elsewhere in cyberspace do not mean that Salut!'s days are numbered, or not yet at any rate. Especially since I now see that my advertising earnings have crept up to an average of 17 cents a day.

Picture: Si1very

But regulars around these parts may be interested to learn that I have found one or two other journalistic outlets to satisfy myself that, all that "garden leave" now over, there is indeed life beyond the Telegraph.

The First Post, a newsy site which already appears to be a home for other former colleagues, has already run a few articles.

There have been two or three on the presidential elections, naturally, but also one apiece on the French smoking ban and a couple of villas that Saddam Hussein's regime bought in the south of France with money that, arguably, could have been better spent in Iraq.

As of tonight, I am also a contributor to CommentIsFree, a talkative and animated corner of the Guardian's website. Ségolène's continuing struggles preoccupied me today, but my hope is to broaden the range of topics much as I try to do here. That link now seems to work.

At my leaving party - sorry, one of my leaving parties, this one in the Cheshire Cheese pub off Fleet Street - I began by condemning my former employers for their cruel and vindictive decision to give me more time to spend with Sunderland football club.

Those with my best interests at heart will be relieved to hear that I have found something more thoughtful than Salut!'s football offshoot to help occupy my time.

Fine mess

Freedom of the press and all that - a great subject, and all the traffic coming this way in recent days implies that others think the same. One to return to, but perhaps it's time to move on.

Salut! goes Munch
thanks Gigi

Heavy, dark skies greeted me as I flew into Stansted the other afternoon. It felt three or four hours later than it was, and you got very wet walking from aircraft to terminal building.

If the south of France needed something to make it seem more attractive, that Essex welcome would have done the trick.

The welcome was to become bleaker. Awaiting me in London - one of my daughters had collected a stack of mail sent to our old home since the Post Office redirection time limit expired - were three letters from bailiffs.

A parking fine I never knew a thing about had naturally gone unpaid. The bailiffs were making bailiff-like threatening noises about what was likely to happen as a consequence.

You sense it means trouble
Picture: Alex Segre

Worse, these letters began in August, 2006 and ended in October. In that time, a parking fine that may have been - and this is a guess - £30 or £40 had turned itself into a debt of £235.

And the figure was still growing. When I was finally able to speak to the bailiffs next morning, I was informed that the sum outstanding now stood at just under £320.

What happens next is unclear. I have lodged an appeal on the grounds that no ticket was left on my car windscreen on the day back in February last year when, in a grim part of Birmingham, I had parked while attending Birmingham City vs Sunderland. I also had no idea I was illegally parked, but that is another issue.

A good case could be made out for penalising someone daft enough to spend good money travelling from France to spend an afternoon in the West Midlands, endure the worst food he can remember eating in a decade and then watch his hopeless, relegation-bound team produce a typically inept performance.

But I still reckon the cost of that day out, now racing past £500 (taking the cost of match tickets and travel into account) unless the appeal melts hearts, was steep.

And the burden is unlikely to be offset by the revenue Salut! enjoys from the Google click-and-earn ads (I think the income currently averages 11 US cents a day). Thanks for the bright ideas on how to illustrate this post - and to Alex Segre, a professional photographer, for allowing me to use his work.

No offence (3)

On a chilly evening in Le Lavandou, we dined alone at L'Auberge Provençale. There were no other customers, the empty tables making a mockery of the owners’ efforts to create a bright, welcoming ambiance.

Voltaire: Ulster needs you
Picture: Jaime2k6.

The meal – we both chose from a set menu, with rougets as starter followed by magret de canard – was simple but excellent, with a pleasant bottle of Provençal red, from the Domaine de l'Angueiroun just three miles away, to accompany it.

Every attempt was made to make us feel comfortable; the first question when we booked was whether we’d like to sit by the log fire. The bill – 79 euros, which also included a bottle of Evian and a shared dessert – was reasonable enough to send us away satisfied that we'd had value for money.

The owners would be pleased with the above words. If this blog were widely read in Le Lavandou, they might even print them out and stick them on the wall, though it would mar the decor.

But what if our experience of L'Auberge Provençale hadn’t seemed so good? What if the mullet had tasted rubbery and the duck slices been so hard you could have bounced them on the table, unconcerned about the risk of knocking over the wine bottle, so awful were its contents?

Would I be as entitled to say as much, in a newspaper or magazine or on line, as I clearly was to report more favourably?

Does anyone seriously believe the answer to that question is other than Yes?

Sadly, a jury of good men (and women) and true in Northern Ireland saw things a little differently. They have just awarded £25,000 in damages, plus m’learned friends’ costs, against the Irish News after a restaurateur complained that a review was defamatory, damaging and hurtful.

The Irish News, in my experience, is a decent daily paper. It is traditionally read by Ulster's nationalist population but is unrecognisable from the days when death notices for terrorists would be enclosed within thick black borders and few Protestants would think of buying a copy.

Its food critic, Caroline Workman, sounds as if she is something of an authority in her field, having had some training in London restaurants and edited the Bridgestone restaurant guide.

She described her visit with friends to the west Belfast pizzeria as "hugely disappointing". The pate did not have much flavour, the flesh of her squid was a grey, translucent colour and her cola drink tasted unchilled, watery and flat.

There was plenty more she did not like about the meal and her rating, one mark out of five, was said to translate as "Stay at home".

The restaurateur considered the review a "hatchet job" and warmly greeted the jury's verdict as evidence that justice had been done.

On the face of it, the verdict is no such thing.

For all I know, there may be no finer place to eat in Ulster than this pizzeria, whatever the reviewer felt.

Nor do I especially blame people for taking advantage of libel laws that are loaded so heavily against the press. Declaring what others might see as an interest, I should add that another Ulster jury did once award damages against my then employers over an article I had written.

The story is told so as to demonstrate that the human desire to censor is not restricted to Muslims who resort to French law in the hope of punishing a magazine for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

That case should never have been allowed inside a courtroom. At least it now stands a good chance of being thrown out, after the prosecutor argued for the dismissal of criminal charges.

But what conclusion should we draw from the case of the pizzeria and the scathing food critic?

If we accept that Ms Workman is telling the truth when she says the review represented her honest opinion, the logic of the outcome is plain: only a dishonest opinion or none at all would have been acceptable in the eyes of Northern Irish justice. And that seems unacceptable in any part of the world that regards itself as a democracy.

Wrong Salut! The Red and White one is elsewhere

When I launched Salut! Sunderland, I promised football-loathing readers of this blog that I would try to keep this site free of matters concerning The (occasionally) Beautiful Game.

Picture: El Viaje

But I need to alert any Sunderland fans who have strayed here thinking they were reaching an SAFC-related blog that they have been misdirected by my confrères at A Love Supreme, who kindly agreed to post a link from their site.

While I try to resolve that bit of false signposting, Sunderland supporters should feel very welcome here but go to www.salutsunderland.typepad.com if they want to complete the cyber journey they first started.

Salut! ducks punches, spreads wings

Fear not: they're posing, too
Photographs: Mitamada.

It is pretty much known that if a school fight breaks out in the comments field, my preference is to let the antagonists get on with it.

Sometimes it gets too hot even for my liking and I intervene.

Sometimes, someone makes such a contentious point - and I am not especially referring to all those made by Judge Jeffreys wannabes on a certain Franco-Canadian case - that I am tempted to respond.

But if it is just, say, the routine fisticuffs of Bill Taylor vs Colin Berry, they are big enough to get on with it. I am not sure if it draws people in or drives them away, but it seems harmless enough from here.

Whether or not the recent Anonymous of Links fame is Richard of Orléans, I should point out that I have not specifically banned anyone from my blogroll.

Not getting round to adding someone is a different thing altogether. When I do link, it is because I think the blog/site is relevant or interesting, not because I necessarily like or agree with what I find there.

In Richard's case, there is obviously severe wind-up at play in much of what he has to say.

He clearly prefers France to Britain. The wind-up comes in the attempt to convince us that he looks more fondly on Nazi Germany than on Britain and would cheerfully have faced, at the end of the Second World War, either a Resistance bullet or British gallows.

But I am happy to add his blog to my links, just as I have chosen today to add a completely new site, Salut! Sunderland.

Where Salut! Sunderland may be bound is at this stage anyone's guess.

I just thought it would be helpful to my many football-phobic readers to be assured that Salut! itself will henceforth adopt a (generally) football-free disposition.

Conveniently, I will also tend to agree with the views expressed there by the blogger.

As for alphabetical order, I think that may have to wait. But I am grateful to whoever started clicking away at the ads after my aside the other day.

Just as I was allowing myself to think that this must be good for another dollar-and-a-half on its way, I checked. And the actual figure was 96 cents. At last they're American ones and not Canadian.

Zizou: the ifs and butts

It does not take much insight into the English way of seeing and doing things to imagine the repercussions had one of our World Cup squad ended his career in Zinedine Zidane fashion.

Picture: Kaptain Kobold.

An English Zidane would have been torn to pieces by press and public, hounded from pillar to post and left feeling he alone had cost his country victory.

In time, he would have been able to shrug off Most Hated Public Figure status. But he would never have been allowed completely to forget the moment of shaming stupidity.

And he most certainly would not, less than six months after the event, have been named his country's most popular personality in a respectable opinion poll.

But that is what has happened in France. Zidane's act of violence, butting the oafish Italian Marco Materazzi under some verbal provocation, has not so much been forgotten as ignored or understood or even applauded by the French public.

Zidane was one of my two favourite footballers of his time, another Frenchman - Thierry Henry - being the other. But my admiration for his consummate skill did not lead me to overlook his appalling disciplinary record - 13 red cards, more than a few of them for behaving as a lout.

On the morning after the last dismissal of Zidane's career contributed greatly to the wrong team winning the 2006 World Cup, the French sports daily L'Equipe gave front page prominence to a stern, headmasterly piece asking how he would explain his coup de tête to millions of youngsters who looked to him as a role model.

That is about as long as Zizou's humiliation lasted.

Later the same day, President Chirac cleverly sensed and exploited what was quickly becoming the public mood, and welcomed the French squad back to Paris as returning heroes and making light of Zidane's disgrace.

Before long, a jolly pop record glorifying the assault on Materazzi was all over the radio and in the charts.

An interview in which Zidane explained himself - a bit, and with regret but not apology - was to become the most-viewed Canal+ programme of the year. And someone in Italy began marketing sweatshirts showing two figures simulating the incident.

So which approach is right? I tend to agree with those who feel the British are far too quick to build 'em up and bring 'em down.

David Beckham did not deserve the abuse he received for the petulance that brought him a red card in France 98. Football is a game of passion and a player should not be consigned to eternal shame for a sudden loss of control.

But nor does Zizou deserve to be hailed the people's hero so soon after setting such an appalling example.

The French who voted for him acted like those parents from hell whose idea of supporting little Darren and Jason in a school match is to jump up and down on the touchline urging children to replicate the excesses of millionaire superstars they see on the telly.

Var humbug? Not likely. Joyeux Noël à tous

Over the coming days, I may need to beg a large degree of patience and understanding from Salut!'s faithful followers and casual visitors.

















It is not that the blog's management has decided to give me Christmas off in recognition of the long, unpaid hours of labour since the blog's launch in October. Nor is it awarding an end-of-year bonus for all that willingness to embrace new ways, new technology.

The plea of poverty is not quite the whole story in any case. In truth, I am excitedly awaiting my first payment for your clicks on targeted advertisements. There is reason to believe that the figure may well stretch beyond cents into dollars (though in low single figures).

But leave aside Christmas, arrival of daughters, family visit to Le Mans and even - on the box tomorrow - Crystal Palace vs my beloved under-achievers Sunderland.

There is the imminent move to consider.

This time next week, we shall be hitting the road in our elderly, sans clim' BMW and exchanging the famous room with a view over the Tuileries for a home from which you can see, beyond the rooftops of other houses, for miles across the hills of the Var.

Monette, accustomed to a swish, mollycoddled life as a Parisian chat d'intérieur, will have to learn about the outside world. And about other cats. We'll have to see how the geraniums get on without polluted Parisian air.

Before the removal men arrive, there are a million cardboard boxes still to fill with CDs, books, files, clothes and whatever. A mail redirection form to fill in. Change of address cards to send; "no, sir, we don't sell them, they're found uniquement à la Poste," I was told in a stationery shop though la Poste insisted they'd stopped stocking them ages ago.

If I get the chance, I will blog, but it would be unwise to make too many promises. For now, then, allow me simply to wish all my readers, supporters and critics alike, a fine festive season.

In particular, I hope that Nathalie Gettliffe is able to derive some enjoyment from her short spell of freedom, granted smartish - and rightly, of course - very soon after her repatriation to France.

She has to return to prison after Christmas, pending legal moves to obtain a more permanent release.

But as one who does not consider that French justice always works as it should, I am delighted to applaud the judge who reached the sort of compassionate decision that seemed beyond the thinking of Canadian counterparts.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of scope for comment in recent postings and the responses received so far, so don't ignore croissants, culottes, Diana and the forever growing France in Flashes.

Meanwhile, Salut! has notched up two notable new achievements this week: the total hits passed 20,000 and profile visits 1,500. That, in two-and-a-half months, isn't bad for a blog described here recently as dying the death.

Decadent distractions

As culinary experiences go, it had the edge on fish and chips eaten out of paper wrapping, and not even newspaper, while walking from Shepherd's Bush to football at Loftus Road.

  Photograph: ParisDailyPhoto (Eric Tenin)

Exactly one week on, just as fans had jostled for position in the fish shop queue on the Uxbridge Road, sharp-elbowed Parisian ladies in cocktail dresses were making their presence felt at the Hotel Lutetia in the grander St Germain des Prés.

But who's to blame them? They'd sat or stood loyally through the 40th annual Prix Culinaire International Pierre Taittinger awards ceremony.

Those able to squeeze into the small hall where the announcements were made had warmly applauded Charly de Wijs, the Dutch winner of this year's prize. The rest nattered a little noisily in an adjoining room.

Trophies presented, it was now time for the serious business of the evening, a sumptuous buffet in the Salon Président of this palatial hotel on the corner of the Boulevard Raspail and Rue de Sèvres.

I always feel slightly uncomfortable in the Lutetia. It's the thought that within these walls people were tortured by German agents during the occupation of Paris.

Last night's feeding frenzy deepened that discomfort, though not quite enough to ruin the appetite.

Guests surrounded each serving table, two or three lines deep at the most popular ones, presenting a formidable obstacle to satisfying that appetite.

Fortified by a glass of bubbly, I persevered. It was worth the effort.

The president of the judging panel, Jacques Pourcel, celebrated co-owner with his twin brother of the Jardin des Sens in Montpellier, was lurking close to the first table entering the salon, and this seemed as good a recommendation as you could expect.

With his fellow judges, a well fed looking line-up, M Pourcel had spent part of the day in the kitchens of the Ecole Ferrandi for the deciding round of what Taittinger calls its gastronomic Nobel.

The seven finalists were each asked to prepare a whole turbot cooked with two sauces, one of which had to be Champagne-based. Francophone foodies should consult the fuller description* below.

In any event, Pourcel looked and sounded the kind of man who knew a thing or too about la bouffe, so I hovered close by. He was sampling the duck foie gras creation** of last year's winner, Jérôme Ryon, from the Carcassonne restaurant La Barbacane, and it turned out to be as delicious as anything else on offer around the room.

Before making my retreat - the place was probably too crowded with people I didn't know to enjoy for long - I had muscled my way through to the agneau d'Oc cooked with garlic, watched huge plates of oysters being rushed through by waiters to replenish depeleted stocks and grabbed a slice of Tomme de Savoie from a cheese display that also had Cantin, Beaufort, Chêne and Pigouille.

In a city packed with beggars, it is difficult not to feel a pang of guilt when taking part in such a feast, even if you do leave early. But then, they're unlikely to ask me back again next year.

* Each finalist was asked to prepare: Turbot presenté entier, farci de homard et nappé avec trois garnitures libres, 2 sauces (dont une sauce Champagne et un libre) et une tarte au citron meringuée.

** Full description of M Ryon's contribution to the buffet: Foie gras de canard cuit au naturel, "chouchou" et marmelade d'orange sur une brioche tiède.