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.

Sign language

Will this sign in the disabled parking spaces at the Champion supermarket in Le Lavandou be respected than the one way markings in the Intermarché car park less than a mile away?
As for the invitation to go and get drowned, I am reliably informed that this is not official council policy. They're just taking a while to erase the graffiti.





Meanwhile, let's not be too hard on the civic leaders of Menton, along the coast next to Italy, for supposing that dogs could read.

Over the top? C'est la totale

News reports in France sometimes recount allegations, usually but not always from outside, that the French are "champions" at this (taking time off, consumption of pills, being prone to complain) or mauvaises élèves at that (learning languages, courtesy on the road and so on).

Enough to make anyone mad?
Picture: So Cal Metro

You don't need to be excessively francophile to doubt the accuracy of the claims in the first place.

But can I raise another possible contender? Are people of other countries as given to hyperbole, in everyday conversation, as the French?

When I first arrived in Paris as a new resident back in July 2004, I described my wife's way of combining comprehensive knowledge of English swearwords with a total failure to moderate their use according to strength of curse each situation warranted.

This is not just to do with the occasional domestic dispute that would arise in any household a chic, vivacious and tidy-minded Frenchwoman shares with a dishevelled, football-supporting folkie.

It is simply the case that whenever she swears in English, she starts pretty high up the range.

Her sister is one of the most mild-mannered people I know, but was a nightmare to be with when she first started driving, berating just about every other road user with a non-stop flow of shouts and insults from the inside of her Citroën 2CV.

I suppose encounters on the road don't count so much, and I am certainly not sure that French road rage is worse than the British version.

But I have witnessed countless examples of the phenomenon, from the fonctionnaire's utter exasperation at the omission of some piddling detail from a form to the platform attendant's unrestrained abuse aimed at some late-arriving passenger.

A slight nip in the air and it's inevitably "freezing". A minor lapse in manners at the table and papa launches into a tirade, with or without accompanying claques, as if a line of cocaine had tumbled from his child's pocket.

On today's lunchtime news, a little girl on a school ski-ing holiday was interviewed as she lay in bed while her friends enjoyed the snow.

She seemed a long way from death's door, but complained of stomach ache, headache and nausea before adding gravely: "C'est la totale."

Her phrase enriched my knowledge of French - a function, I suppose, of not having children living at home to keep me in touch with their everyday use of the language.

But was her reaction to minor ailments just another isolated instance, no more characteristic of the French than the stiff upper lip is of the English? Or does experience lead others to believe the French are les champions of exaggeration?

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?

Ségo: it's tough being a woman

However you look at it, Ségolène Royal's television audience - a peak of just under 10.6 million viewers, an average of 8.9 million - proves she is a remarkable draw.

Picture: François Lafite

The average was comfortably higher than the ratings for her rival Nicolas Sarkozy's similar broadcast, itself described as a record for a political programme in France, two weeks ago.

Many people will have tuned in expecting, a lot of them hoping, to see Ségo stumble and fall. But she will take huge comfort from the figures, believing the massive penetration will help her rise above media, opposition and even Left Bank intellectual disdain.

Some will remember mention here of her steeliness and ambition being seen as faults, whereas in a man they'd be hailed as virtues.

This notion surfaced again the other day when she reacted sharply to questions about the abrupt resignation, allegedly over funding of her programme, of an economic adviser.

It was certainly an eyebrow-raising moment, and poor PR, but the writer of one column I saw couldn't resist adding that she was too quick to reveal herself as hard. Sarko seems to get off much more lightly when he makes ill-considered ripostes.

Last night, she argued that running for the presidency was harder for a woman, that no man would have had his competence questioned as constantly as has happened to her.

It was a long programme but I felt Royal did reasonably well after a ponderous start (not her fault; the first questioner was allowed to ramble for ever).

She made the right noises (for the left, so to speak) on youth unemployment, pensions, small businesses and the disabled. And she refused to be wrong-footed by questions about the Parti Socialiste "elephants", not least what role if any she would hand as President Royal to her partner François Hollande, the general secretary.

The moment when she walked over to console a wheelchair-bound man, in tears as he described living with MS, could have been embarrassing but wasn't. It looked a genuine gesture, but I suspect it will also have done her no harm.

I found her a little less assured on the presidency itself - "I think I am ready" hardly had the ring of confidence - and on that thorny issue of how she will pay for her programme. But Sarko has unanswered questions in that area, too.

François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who has been steadily improving his showing in the polls, is an interesting sideshow. I simply do not believe the poll that found he would beat either Ségo or Sarko if he made it through to the second round, but he is capable of inflicting damage, especially on her.

Royal's best bet, provided she can finally sort out her unimpressive campaign team, is that those 10.59 million viewers - isn't that 10,589,000 more than are canvassed in the average poll? - liked not only what they saw, which is usually the case, but what they heard, too.

Pride, prejudice and the press

Reading about the life and times of Maurice Papon, the Vichy collaborator who signed French Jews' death warrants, I felt the glow of distantly reflected pride.

Where Papon's deportees ended up
Picture: Danielzolli

Here, and over at Roy Greenslade's Guardian blog, there has lately been talk of how ritualistic prejudice againt the press leads to grotesque libel awards that (should) bring shame to the countries and courts in which they are made.

Not everyone agrees with me or the similar, though hardly identical, views expressed by my fellow blogger.

But turning to Papon, let us start with the proposition that his exposure as a war criminal was no bad thing.

That will not seem too controversial a point to most of those who stray into Salut!.

But how did that exposure come about, given that Papon proceeded from being the second most senior French official in wartime Bordeaux to a very prominent post-war career in public life (though that career was scarcely without disgrace)?

It came about because the press (newspapers) did what it is - they are - best at.

In May 1981, France's satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchainé, revealed documents establishing Papon's culpability in the deportation of nearly 1,700 Jews from Bordeaux to the Drancy internment camp on the outskirts of Paris between 1942 and 1944.

Many of these unfortunates went from Drancy to Auschwitz. Very, very few came home. As the Allied victory neared, Papon saw what was coming and switched sides, reinventing himself as a Resistance informer and later collecting an honour from General de Gaulle for his pains.

Ultimately, he was jailed for 10 years for crimes against humanity. He fled to Switzerland but was returned to serve all of three years of his sentence.

As a self-confessed liberal on penal issues, I have no real complaint about his release in 2002 on health grounds. But Papon goes to his grave having never found the courage or humility to admit to his wrongdoing.

He insisted to the end that he was the blameless victim, as (with variations to the theme) is so often the case among those who dislike how they portrayed in newspapers, of "unprecedented media pillorying made up of lies, insults and infamy".

Great stuff, Le Canard Enchainé! I have said the French press is more decent but also more dull than the British variety, but here it managed to be both immensely decent and a long way from dull.

And so it is on the other side of the Channel. The press, from ruthless proprietors to individual journalists, makes plenty of mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes are serious and, much more rarely, they have serious consequences.

But often, the press is punished disproportionately for its mistakes; the rich, powerful and merely fortunate would be horrified at how low I'd cap libel awards, while insisting on due - OK, French-style - prominence for apologies or corrections.

And almost always, the press attracts far less praise than it deserves when it acts in its own loftier traditions.

Leave aside the unmasking of war criminals or the spotlights trained on government and corporate injustices.

For every unfairly criticised politician, pop star and supermodel, there are scores of ordinary people who have been assisted, by local and national newspapers alike, towards some semblance of fair treatment in their David vs Goliath battles with gas boards, insurance companies, banks and other private or public bodies.

Unfashionable, especially on a blog, and probably unnecessary since I no longer have a newspaper job, but true.

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 (4)

Confirmation has appeared here over the past two days, if I needed it, that lots of people do not really believe in free speech.

Why trouble the courts?
Picture: mcdowell

Richard of Orléans will forgive the thought that he would not be everyone's choice to lecture on the importance of expressing opinions without the least hint of rudeness.

No, I have not seen the Irish News article in full. I gave the flavour of it, as best I could from perusal of news reports (using sources I regard as usually dependable), and made it clear that the review contained further criticisms.

I do not even know if the article can be viewed on any news databases, given that it led to a libel action and newspaper librarians tend to get jumpy in such circumstances. Added point: you can read more about this in Roy Greenslade's blog at the Guardian Media website.

But my argument did not rest on the precise nature of the criticism. I was more concerned with the principle.

Take away a critic's right to criticise and you may as well empty whole shelves of public libraries, forbid serious discussion of any artistic, sporting or other human endeavour and ban Simon Cowell from the air. Well, maybe the last reference wasn't my strongest point.

The blogosphere seems, at first thought, an odd place for people to be applauding ferocious penalties for those who express views they find unpalatable.

But when you study some of the more obscene libel awards made particularly but not always by juries, it is not so surprising after all.

Since Britain, I am pleased to say, is still a newspaper reading country, many of the jurors taking part in the exercise are likely themselves to be avid consumers of the press.

Bill Taylor refers to critics on major Canadian papers (this is an amended reference; see my comment) making repeat visits before a stridently critical restaurant view appears and this seems eminently sensible and fair.

The fact that it would still not be enough for some, more concerned with clipping the wings of journalists, rather supports the opening lines of this post.

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.

No offence (2)

The response to my posting about the Mohammed cartoons, and the preposterous trial their publication prompted in Paris, has been a disappointment.

Islam will dominate
Picture (and caption): El Marco.

This is not to say that I mind a serious topic being hijacked in the comments section for a spot of backbiting between feuding readers.

You do not actually have to wade through much of that to find some perfectly sensible and thought-provoking opinions and assertions posted here over the past 18/24 hours.

It just seems a little incomplete to have no one writing in to challenge my basic proposition: namely, that Muslims (and Roman Catholics, and Protestants and so on) have no right to demand the suppression of words and images about them or Islam (or other groups of believers, or their faiths) unless criminal incitement is involved.

The advantage of blogging for the Telegraph was that a big newspaper site was always likely to attract readers of all types.

Salut! has highly respectable levels of readership - well over 700 visits yesterday alone - and it boasts comment statistics most Telegraph bloggers can but dream of.

But it would benefit from some diversification among the ranks of readers willing to step forward, identified or otherwise, to let off steam.

With comments in response to No offence nudging 50 as I write, the nearest we have had to a Muslim point of view opposing my argument was the following, signed by an anonymous contributor:

As the comments seem to be a private conversation, (I) am a little wary of pointing out that the reason Muslims are offended by the cartoons, is not that they are terrorists, but that Islam proscribes pictorial representations of Mohammed, Xtianity on the other hand is full of icons, false or otherwise.

That comment could have been posted by a Muslim, though my guess is that it was not.

The obvious reply, incidentally, is that Muslims are fully entitled to expect one another to observe the rules of their faith, whether on pictorial representation of Mohammed or anything else.

They are not entitled to require others, outside their faith, to do likewise. That is where the trouble tends to start; many, many Muslims - and whoever said France has four or five million is almost certainly underestimating the true figure - do see Islam as so superior that it will one day rule the world whether the world likes it or not.

And that view is by no means restricted to extremists.

As for the quality of debate inspired by my blog, that is a matter I am perfectly happy to leave to you. My policy on censorship was established very early.

Only when a comment gives me serious cause for legal or other concerns will I step in. It has happened on perhaps three or four occasions, once or twice when I put on my media lawyer's hat, and otherwise when remarks about my former employers - and believe me, my own powers of self-restraint have been sorely tested - went too far.

* And for those who missed my update, the prosecutor in the Paris trial made the commonsense decision to urge the court to dismiss the charges.

No offence

It is always a pleasure to talk to the listeners of BBC Radio Ulster, as I did yesterday, not least because during long years of covering the Troubles, I grew very fond of the city in which it is based.

The station called last night, wanting some thoughts on the case of the Muslim organisations that have taken the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to court for re-running the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that caused such offence when they appeared in a Danish publication.

I have no strong views on Charlie Hebdo, which I see rarely but have found by turns funny (which is fine), irreverent (ditto) and tasteless (see the view on free speech attributed to Voltaire).

There is no doubt that many decent Muslims will have been appalled to see - or, rather more likely, to learn second or third or fourth hand about - the cartoons.

One showed Mohammed perched on a cloud turning suicide bombers away from paradise with the words: "Stop, stop. We are running out of virgins."

But I am not sure how this insults any Muslims except terrorist Muslims.

If, as has been shown, some fanatics are motivated, at least in part, by the belief that dozens of virgins await them once they have blown themselves and others to smithereens, there is no reason on earth why that belief should not be ridiculed.

The French Muslim Council, and the Paris Grand Mosque, both involved directly or indirectly in the current case, are right to ask for Islam to be respected, but wrong to suppose that it should be given automatic legal protection from disrespect.

If real criminal offences are committed - incitement to murder Muslims, for example, or to burn down their mosques - then the law has ample remedies. Words and cartoons mocking Islamist psychopaths who turn to terrorism are not in the same category and should not be liable to legal sanction.

Philippe Val, Charlie Hebdo's editor, argued that the cartoons did not amount to an attack on Islam but addressed "the ideas defended by certain men who legitimise violence in the name of Islam". What is so wrong in that?

Nothing, I am belatedly pleased to add, according to the prosecution, which asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that Charlie Hebdo was not attacking Islam but terrorists who claimed to act in its name or the name of Mohammed.

After talking to Radio Ulster, I thought back to a superb Belfast satirical ensemble, the Hole in the Wall Gang, whose humour was aimed at just about everyone who made Northern Ireland what it then was.

Green or orange, or some shade in between, politicians and pundits and - yes - churchmen were all considered legitimate targets. But isn't that the point? They were legitimate targets of prose and stage routines, not the bombs and bullets that were also a feature of everyday Ulster life and death.

I am sure plenty of Roman Catholic and Protestant figures were outraged by the revue; a few, doubtless, would have liked it silenced. That is human nature; remember that line in Stoppard's Night and Day: "I'm all in favour of the free press. It's the bloody papers I can't stand."

But the Hole in the Wall Gang played on. If memory serves, they eventually found themselves mocked by others.

The court hearing the cartoons case in Paris will announce on March 15 whether it is following the prosecution's recommendation that the charges should be thrown out.

But a lot has already been made in coverage of the hearing of Nicolas Sarkozy's letter of support of Charlie Hebdo.

Though he was often enough on the receiving end of the magazine's wit, he saw such publications as acceptable if not essential components of France's commitment to freedom of expression and a secular public policy. An excess of caricature, he said, was better than an absence of it.

Other politicians followed his example today, giving evidence on the magazine's behalf.

But I liked most of all the contribution of the very first witness.

This is what he had to say:

"I urge Muslims to adapt to Europe and not the other way around."

So which ranting Man of the People had Charlie Hebdo imported from a wicked Anglo-Saxon tabloid? Alternatively, who was the appalling French racist responsible for such provocative testimony.

Step forward one of the heroes of yesterday's proceedings, a philosopher from the Paris University. His name is Abdel Wahhab Meddeb and the defence rests.

No outdoor smoke without ire

Stand by for a news flash from Paris's Had to Happen department.

Someone may be watching you
Picture: Meteorry.

Few can have failed to notice that smokers, faced with fines if they light up at work, are forming sad little huddles at the entrances to workplaces.

It is not completely new, of course - the same sight, involving smaller numbers, could be encountered even before the recent law took effect
as more and more offices imposed their own bans.

What is fresh, however, is the stern warning from the Mairie de Paris that anyone stubbing out a cigarette on the pavement faces a whacking 183 euro fine.

That is rather steeper than the penalty for defying the smoking ban and the same price you'd pay if caught allowing your dog to do its business on le trottoir.

Was there ever a better reason for the street, in the noble traditions of France, to make itself heard?

French workers hooked on the weed must instantly mobilise to fight for outdoor ashtrays.

When Irish eyes smiled for Ségolène

Picture: politiquecafe.

She struggles to impress in her campaign to become France's first woman president. But Ségolène Royal will at least have seen one recent article that was not calculated to leave her in a steaming rage or cringing with embarrassment.

Rare among the thousands of words written and uttered about Ségo in the past fortnight or more, these were unequivocally positive - telling of her pleasant nature, intelligence and humour.

Paris Match told the story of the young Ségolène as au pair girl, back in 1971 when she was a beautiful, vivacious teenager needing a bit of English practice.


Ségo was not parked in a leafy suburban town in Surrey, or at the London town house of the sort of people who drive Chelsea tractors and have children called Gideon and Arabella. She was sent to Dublin.


What she made of any Guinness or rebel songs she encountered is not known, so far as I am aware. But she did leave a deep and favourable impact on the Irish family whose lives she briefly shared.

Ségolène, or Marie-Ségolène as she was still known as a girl of not quite 18, followed in the footsteps of another French au pair, Armelle, who had evidently been made a sterner stuff.

The change of home help produced a change of atmosphere that was enough for the freckled Roche children - Graziella, John and Peter - to think Mary Poppins had replaced Mademoiselle Cruella.

That may be well unfair on Armelle, though I do recall the surliness of one or two French girls who stayed with us when my daughters were small.

Marie-Ségolène, in any event, was a breath of fresh air for the Roche kids and their large gang of friends, baking everyone cakes, drawing with Graziella or taking her to pony riding lessons and chasing butterflies.

Young Peter remembers her dark blue Bermuda shorts. He was only five but perhaps already had an eye for the feminine charms that have, for no good reason if we are honest, done Ségo little harm in her rise to prominence.

There was also a swattish side to the au pair. The observant Peter retains a vision of Ségo writing copiously in an exercise book, one page after another, as the children watched television.

A meal-time photograph of au pair and young charges accompanies the Paris match report. "She may have been brought up severely," the children's mother, Renate, tells the magazine in a reference to the austere, disciplined regime of Colonel Jacques Royal's household. "But just look at the picture of peace around the table - that sums up her sojourn with us."

I started by giving Paris Match the credit. But let me end by being fair to the man who really brought this interesting little episode of Ségo's life to wider attention.

John Lichfield, the excellent and convivial Paris correspondent of The Independent, heard about the Irish connection from a Dublin lawyer, Sheena Beale.

Sheena met and befriended Ségolène when both were on holiday in Normandy as 16-year-olds. She was out of the country when her French pal arrived as an au pair but put her in touch with friends and relatives.

John then discovered that the Roche children's late father had been best man at the wedding of his own parents-in-law, themselves Dubliners.

Sheena described her Marie-Ségolène as a "strikingly beautiful girl with long, dark hair - I thought she looked like Sophia Loren". The French girl was "great fun to be with but very focused, very determined...I never imagined that she would go into politics but it doesn't surprise me that she has gone so far."

Unlike Paris Match, John found that Renate Roche - now remarried and called Webster - had no recollection of the future presidential candidate among several French au pairs.

Whatever the magazine's envoyé special did to jog her memory for his report entitled Une Baby-sitter nommèe Marie-Ségolène, it's a reasonable bet that Renate will be taking a more personal interest in the progress of the battle for the Elysée.

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.

Gremlins update

Judging from the countless messages sent to the Blogger (ie Blogspot) help line, Salut! must have been among thousands of web logs suffering yesterday from those old bX-vjhbsj blues.

That is what the error was called and it appeared on the screen when people tried to visit certain blogs or, once there, post and view comments.

A technical note, intended to assist those whose blogs were affected, helpfully advised "hitting Refresh in the browser" to "workaround the problem".

"Workaround" one of those non-words invented with the aim of incensing English speakers.

But in any case, the idea that blog readers get out so little that they will sit there hitting the "refresh" key over and over again until they can read my thoughts on the French smoking ban is mildly absurd.

If I correctly understand the next phrase - "unfortunately pushing out the new build involved a few minutes outage" - it becomes clear that Salut! was unavailable at all for some time (and, I think, rather more than "a few minutes").

It is also evident, from a quick check on the clever site that counts and analyses visits to my blog, in almost Orwellian Big Brother fashion, that the effect here was seriously to reduce yesterday's numbers.

All now seems to have been resolved. Thank you for your patience, and welcome back.

Unidentified gremlins hit Blogger

Readers of Salut! and, come to that, a million other blogs may be experiencing problems.

blogging fog
Picture: nj dodge.

Bloggers - that is to say, people with blogs on Blogspot - are repeatedly getting "error" messages when they try to view their sites, look at comments or make changes.

No one at Blogger seems to have responded in any meaningful way so far, so I have no idea how long this will persist.

If anyone reading Salut! has been trying to post comments and simply cannot connect, please feel free to send them to me at colinrandall2001@yahoo.fr, specifying how you want to be identified (name, nickname, initials, anon etc and where you want the comment to appear.

As soon as I am able, I will then post the comment on your behalf.

The fag end of France's smoking culture

Does the big stick work when trying to stamp out smoking?

Picture:_Pyro_.

Well, it didn't at school, where being caught guaranteed a caning. And I am not sure £48 fines will be any more effective in France now that the ban on smoking in many public places has taken effect.

The French are notoriously unruly in their approach to rules, regulations and conventions of which they do not approve.

The health minister may sound confident that the new law will be largely observed, but with legions of young people among 10 million or more French smokers, the early days and weeks may be a severe test.

If I am right to think of the French as almost professionally rebellious - they do love to claim to have been there at the birth of revolution - there will be lots of instances of defiance of the law.

Smoking is still seen as sexy and cool by lots of the French, and especially young people. And as any ex-smokers out there will readily agree, giving up once the habit has taken hold is genuinely hard.

Boys' choir practice at St John's Church in Shildon, Co Durham. That's where I first took up the weed.

I have guilty memories of covering my father's packet of Players untipped with a newspaper or comic, and easing a cigarette out without him seeing.

Threats of dire punishment at school did nothing to deter. Later, when I was smoking far, far too many cigarettes a day for my meagre pay to support, early morning coughing fits also failed to put me off.

By the time I eventually stopped, I was was nearly 30 and smoking at least one cigarette a day for each year of my life. I'd go to Belfast to cover the Troubles, rising early and staying up late in bars where lighting up seemed almost obligatory, and consumption would rocket.

After a fortnight of that, I'd return to England run down, and perhaps suffering from a chest infection that would make smoking positively unpleasant and painful. Still I would persevere.

It was on such a return that I finally found the will to stop smoking.

I was so poorly that I really could not smoke at all without severe discomfort. Within 10 days, I had recovered but knew I would never have a better chance to give up.

Once I felt really better, I rewarded myself with a packet of 10 - but I sensibly threw them away almost immediately and haven't smoked since.

Everyone who stops finds it gets easier as times goes by. The first weeks are obviously the worst but if you smoke heavily now and then succeed in giving up, you will probably - like me - always think of yourself as a smoker who doesn't smoke rather than a non-smoker.

In a recurring dream, I have taken it up again, reached 20 or so a day in no time and refuse to call a halt because I have persuaded myself I can stop any time I want.

If any smokers find that discouraging, they shouldn't. In real life, I am never tempted. But how to stop and stay stopped is not where I began these reflections on the French ban.

And when I think back, there is a ray of light for those wondering how on earth than can ever comply with the new restrictions.

Even at the height of my smoking career, I was able mentally to switch off as a user if I found myself in a court or some other environment where it was simply banned - however quickly I'd reach for the fags on getting outside again.

Smoking areas - upstairs on a bus, for example, or one carriage on the Tube - were usually so vile that they offered no proper relief and I routinely avoided them.

In time, I suspect, and perhaps before the ban extends next year to bars and restaurants, French smokers who cannot overcome the addiction may acquire another habit: knowing when and where it is just not allowed.