Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Sarkozy insult returns as French rap hit

You might remember the singer who made a splash by setting to music the "come back" text message that Nicolas Sarkozy may have sent to Cécilia, his ex-wife. Now a young musician from Lorraine has scored with a video in which he raps to Sarko's notorious insult: Casse Toi Pauvre Con

The President used the line in February to put down a man who refused to shake his hand at the Paris agriculture show. We had an argument here about the English equivalent, which is something like "Piss off, jerk" or "Get lost, wanker".

Sarko would prefer to forget it, but his flash of unpresidential temper became one of the milestones of his first year. As well as being repeated often on television, it has been watched over five million times on video sites.

This spoof song, by a 25-year-old video technician who uses the name Tum Sally, is crude, but it has created such a buzz that the mainstream media have picked it up and a Paris record label his given him a contract.

Chatting up the revolution, French style

 

We saw the other day that the French Socialists, the main opposition party, are giving up their hope for revolution. But don't throw away the red flag yet. The past couple of days have seen the consecration of a new hero who has won millions of fans with his struggle to overthrow capitalism.

The star of the moment is Olivier Besancenot, the baby-faced Trotskyite who scored over four percent of the vote in last year's presidential election. Besancenot, 34, who works as a postman in the rich suburb of Neuilly, has made news with an appearance on French television's most consensual talk show, Vivement Dimanche. This is a Sunday ritual in which Michel Drucker, the dean of celebrity interviewers, sketches the life of his guest with soft questions and the help of musicians and friends of the subject. The media fuss was prompted by the supposed incongruity of the cosy talk host inviting a fire-breathing Trotskyite onto his red sofa for the ritual three-hour chat [video below]. 

In reality, there was nothing surprising. As we have noted here before, Besancenot is quite a standard French product: the loveable revolutionary. He was not even the first popular Trotskyite to be invited by Drucker. Arlette Laguiller, his grandmotherly rival, made it onto the show a decade ago. 

France enjoys the lazy, hazy days of May.

It feels like an August weekend in Paris today. The sun is blazing, as it has for the past week. The streets are largely empty except for tourists. Much of France is enjoying a fifth successive day off work.

President Sarkozy may preach the doctrine of "working more to earn more", but his country has seized the chance to enjoy what the headline in le Parisien newspaper called "Five days of happiness".  The long spring break has been made possible by the lucky timing of two public holidays for the nation that already enjoys more vacation days than any other. Last Thursday, May 8, was the holiday marking victory in World War Two and today is Pentecost (Whitsun in Britain). Friday was supposed to be a working day but schools in the Paris area and many other regions stayed shut  -- so people took the day off, enjoying what is known as le pont, or bridge.

Many even managed nearly 10 days because there was another unofficial pont on Friday May 2, after the May Day holiday fell on a Thursday. Half of France either took that Friday or last Friday or both, according to a poll.

French "news babe" gets married

One of the most popular posts on this blog featured Melissa Theuriau, the French television journalist whose good looks turned her into a global internet celebrity. So I feel it my duty to advise her fans that they may wish to adjust their fantasies. She got married yesterday.    

Theuriau, 29, who hosts a weekly news programme on the M6 channel, wed Jamel Debbouze, 33, a popular comedian-producer. in a village south of Versailles. They flew with showbusiness guests to Morocco to continue the party in Marrakesh.

Debbouze, the pint-sized French-Moroccan star of two Astérix films, Amélie and other hits, is by far the greater celebrity in France. Theuriau is barely a household name, but abroad the union will disappoint the multitude who have swooned over videos of her since she achieved cyber-fame.

"The beautiful French news anchor" as she is known to her American admirers, rocketed to celebrity after clips of her turned up on Youtube. She was not doing anything risqué, simply reading routine items on the pre-dawn news on the LCI cable channel.  Her "perfect beauty" won her the title of "TV's sexiest news anchor" in the online edition of the US Maxim magazine. The feat was impressive given that she was running against America's TV superstars and readers would have understood little that she said. Melissa-mania has led millions to click on her 150 videos on Youtube and she features on countless screensavers.

Theuriau, from Grenoble, has sought to retain an image as a serious journalist as host of "Forbidden Zone", her investigative show. She also presents "Two or three days with me", an M6 programme in which she invites a celebrity to visit a favourite city. In January, Gérard Depardieu broadcast with here from Tel Aviv.

Laments on the internet over her marriage have focused on her choice of groom. Debbouze, a subversive comedian from the ethnic estates (projects), plays the underdog. He is helped by his disadvantaged physique, which includes a paralysed arm. "With all the hot guys there are in France, she had to fall for this clown," Jorge, a reader grumbled on one celebrity site. "She wouldn't look at him if he wasn't loaded with money."

France revels in nostalgia for magic May '68

It is a little sad, but inevitable, that France's last revolt in the name of liberty should be reduced to a tin of expensive tea. Here it is, "May 68 -- a tea with the flavour of revolution" from Fauchon, the most luxurious food store in Paris

Forty years ago this weekend, the students of the Sorbonne university staged their joyous insurrection on the Paris Left Bank. Their carnival of slogans and barricades helped trigger the country's biggest general strike and briefly rattled the government of President Charles de Gaulle. The confused rebellion soon fizzled but "the events of May '68" marked a middle-class generation. Since they were the baby-boomers, no-one is allowed to forget it.

Now passing on power to their juniors, la génération de soixante-huit are enjoying a last hurrah, an orgy of nostalgia for the glorious upheaval in which, for a moment, it seemed they could remake the world. They may have given up Fidel Castro for Fauchon, but they are proud of their youthful ideals.

France celebrates its little old Citroen

Since it's spring in Paris and I'm taking a few days off, let me indulge in some four-wheeled nostalgia. You see it in the picture --  the Citroen Deux Chevaux.

It's 60 years since the rustic, quirky "deudeuche" was offered to an initially unimpressed public and it's 18 years since the last of five million left the assembly line. You don't see many around any more but the intrepid little 2CV is the object of fond memory for anyone lived those decades. If you're one of them and around Paris, it's worth a visit to the show that the Cité des Sciences has just opened in homage to the little car.

In the post-war years, Italy had its Fiat 500, Germany its VW Beetle and Britain, a little later, its Mini. The Gallic motoring icon was la deudeuche, or the deux-pattes (two paws), as the two-horse car was also nicknamed.  The 2CV Expo Show offers a parade of deudeuches through the decades, from the austere, grey-only 1948 model to the retro-chic "Charleston" of the 1980s. 

How not to end an affair, Paris-style.

Here is some advice to any man contemplating a love affair with a Parisian writer or artist: Don't.

You may find yourself held up to public ridicule and crucified in the name of art. It happened a couple of years ago to a banker who enjoyed a liaison with Christine Angot, a popular writer. She demolished him by recounting every gory detail of his performance in a book that became a best-seller. The unfortunate financier was not named, but everyone in his milieu knew who it was.

Now, Sophie Calle, a successful photographer and "installation artist", has gone one better by making a spectacular fool of a lover who dumped her with a callous, convoluted  e-mail. It ended with a breezy, "prenez soin de vous". This comes from the English "take care of yourself" and sounds odd in French and even colder with the distant "vous" rather than intimate "tu".

To sooth her pain and exact revenge, Calle, 54, took the pompous "mail de rupture" to 107 women in fields ranging from marriage counselling and anthropology to the police and the state intelligence service. She filmed and photographed their reactions and turned their funny and vitriolic verdicts into a show that became France's entry to the Venice Biennale of contemporary art last year. An expanded version has just opened to acclaim in the old reading room room of the National Library in Paris.

The experts include celebrities, such as Jeanne Moreau, the actress, Leila Shaheed, the Palestinian ambassador, and a bevy of performers and writers, including Christine Angot of course. Most at the time did not know the identity of "G", the apparently married lover, says Calle. But of course everyone in the intello-artsy world knows that he is a certain writer. He dedicated a new novel to Calle on the day that he broke up with her. Angot's contribution says: "The chorus that you have created around this letter is the chorus of death." Not every commentary is so serious. On one video screen, a (female) parrot eats a print-out of the e-mail.

When you enter the magnificent vaulted chamber and see a big projected video of a woman firing a sniper's rifle that you are in for an uncomfortable time.

Unpopular Sarkozy seeks relaunch one year on

We have almost had 12 months of President Sarkozy. A year ago today, the Sarko magic was in full swing as France gave him the lead in the first round of the election.

Now, the former Super Sarko is wallowing in unpopularity. Some surveys suggest that that he has begun to recover after the winter crash when he came off the rails with his divorce and giddy courtship of Carla Bruni. He has stopped being showmaster-in-chief and adopted a more sober, presidential, style, letting the government get on with running the country.

But an IFOP poll today shows that he has lost another point in the past month, putting him at only 36 percent approval. This makes him more unpopular than any president one year into office since the revamped republic opened in 1958. His 64 percent negative towers above the 47 percent registered after one year by Jacques Chirac, the other flame-out president.

The hardest for Sarko may be the finding that 79 percent believe that his presidency has done nothing to "improve the situation of France and the French".  Sarkozy bears much of the blame for failing to live up to expectations, yet it's not all his fault. Here's why:

Frenchman to sing in English against Irish turkey

Nothing tickles les Anglo-Saxons more than stories about the French surrendering to the English language. The latest version springs from France Television's decision to enter a song with English lyrics in the Eurovision contest for the first time.

Skip this paragraph if you are European: The Eurovision contest started in 1956 to promote fraternity among the recently warring nations. It turned long ago into an orgy of kitsch. Along the way it launched ABBA, a bunch of unknown Swedes who won in 1974 with Waterloo. The annual final, broadcast live to an audience well over 100 million, gives little nations a patriotic moment; the big ones treat the whole thing as a joke. Over half now sing in English and the next contest takes place in Belgrade on May 24. The Serbians won last time. The Irish, who speak a sort of English, have won most (see Ireland's Turkey at end). The French have not won since 1977.

This year, the state tv network decided to go with the flow, sending Sébastien Tellier, an eccentric singer-composer with a big beard, to Belgrade to perform a catchy track from his new all English album Sexuality [video below]. "Big deal" has been the general reaction. English  has been successfully embraced by many French artists in the past few years and the choice of Tellier was so uncontroversial that it went unnoticed at first.   

The lack of protest has been the real sign of the times. France3 television  anointed Tellier on March 7 and it took five weeks for anyone to complain. A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

The original Concours Eurovision de la Chanson was begun when French was the common language of the continent. The state still spends hundreds of millions of euros a year on the rearguard language campaign and President Sarkozy is one of the chief defenders, so objections were inevitable. They have now appeared, led by a junior parliamentarian from President Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement. 

François-Michel Gonnot, 59, demanded that Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister given an account to Parliament. "This shocks a lot of citizens who do not understand why France is giving up the defence of its language before hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world," he said.

Albanel, who was apparently unaware of the shocking choice, has responded by calling it a pity and saying that she would tell France television to make a more linguistically correct decision next time.

Super Sarkozy greets hostages after pirate triumph

France is pleased with the stylish way that its navy and special forces handled the seizure of the Ponant, the big French superyacht that was boarded by pirates off Somalia 10 days ago. Six of the 20 or so pirates were captured by helicopter-borne French commandos as they made an overland getaway with part of the ransom.

The operation, directed by President Sarkozy, was well run and it shows how France can put well-equipped forces into action on the high seas at long distance. The 30 crew, most of them young French citizens, were released on Friday and are flying back to Paris tonight on a military Airbus. Sarkozy is going to the airport to greet them. There were no passengers. The captured Somali bandits -- said to be former fishermen -- are being brought back to Paris to stand trial.

The armed forces have been putting out their story and le Figaro today has details of their intrepid exploit. The pirates, for example, brought two goats on board for milk but they spent a lot of their time draining the ship's copious bars. One pirate disappeared overboard in the night, apparently drunk.

I don't want to dampen the good news, but no-one is asking how much the whole thing cost or wondering about the ransom, said to be 2.5 million dollars, that was paid for the crew's freedom.

[le Ponant (an old word for west)]

Popster joins France's grand academy

King Louis XIII and Napoleon Bonaparte must be turning in their graves. The Académie Française, France's oldest and grandest cultural institution, has just elected to its midst a writer of pop lyrics.

Jean-Loup Dabadie, 69, a wordsmith who has penned hits for two generations of singers and written successful screenplays, is the first humble saltimbanque (entertainer) to join the hallowed institution that guards the French language and soul. For four centuries, only literary worthies and distinguished elders of the establishment have been elevated to the status of "immortal", as the 40 members are known.

In the last try, decades ago, the academy rejected Charles Trenet, the top crooner of the World War Two era. Four years ago, die-hards made a vain attempt to block the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former President, on the grounds that he had produced only one second-rate novel.

Be famous for your initials in France

Here's a test of your knowledge of modern France and its passion for abbreviation. Explain the following headline which appeared in a newspaper today

OGM + NKM + UMP = COCKTAIL EXPLOSIF

To anyone following the news, the line in La Charente Libre made complete sense. OGM stands for genetically modified organism; NKM is the Minister for the Environment, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet; UMP is President Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement. The minister had just caused a furore by accusing her own party of cowardice over genetically modified crops.

Like other Latin and bureaucratic countries, France shortens many long titles into every-day initials. Un smicard is someone who receives le SMIC, or minimum wage. Few bother saying jeux olympiques. The games are usually just les JO. This is not to be confused with a GO, or gentil organisateur, a host at the old Club Med resorts, thus any boy-scoutish organiser. The 35-hour working week has given France the joys of the RTT (pronounce errtété) or time off (Récuperation du Temps de Travail). You can use it for a spot of VTT  (mountain biking)

Abbreviating names is especially French. All right, America had JFK first, but say JFK in Paris and people will understand Jean-François Kahn, a veteran journalist and commentator. You know you have made the big time when your initials replace your name. NKM (the environment minister, in picture), who is only 34, earned the rank this week with her feisty defiance of her bosses.

She only apologised after a threat of dismissal from Sarkozy, who is known as NS only to his staff and the tailor who monograms the left chest of his custom-made shirts. MKM is, however, dangerously close to NTM, a notorious rap group which has just been relaunched. Their initials stand for "F...Your Mother" in urban slang).

To be fair to Sarko, few earn two-initial celebrity. The last was probably BB, the film star-turned animal lover whose initials became a pop music hit in the hands of the great Serge Gainsbourg, her lover at the time (any excuse for another Gainsbourg video, see below).

France makes law to fight eating disorder

France's fondness for inventing odd laws to change human behaviour entered new territory today. A criminal offence is to be created to punish the act of promoting excessive thinness. Those found guilty will face up to three years in jail and 45,000 euros fine.   

This is not a laughing matter. The offence is defined in a government-backed bill that has just been tabled as part of the campaign to combat anorexia nervosa. The first use of prosecutors to tackle eating disorders is broadly aimed at the media and fashion world, but especially at the websites and blogs of the so-called pro-ana movement.

While many of these are support groups, others promote starvation as a "life-style choice", with girls and young women posting their wasting images as "thinspiration" for others. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry and you get the point. It reads as though it has been written by a pro-ana convert.

France puzzled by new road signs

 

France has just come up with some strange new road signs. What would you say is designated by the faintly erotic half-moons here? The sign informs passing traffic that nearby is “a garden that has been officially certified as a garden of note”. On inquiry, the Ministry of Culture defines this as a garden certified as having “design, plants and care of a remarkable level”.

This one is a bit clearer. It tells thirsty drivers that they can buy wine nearby

If they consume it, they might then want to look for this sign:

 

The 20 new panneaux de signalisation from the superministry of the environment are intended to update obsolete pictograms. Several are mystifying and I'll get back to them. Writing the story for the newspaper, I was musing about the way that road signs reflect the national culture.

French pilots show women can fly

Meet Virginie Guyot. She flies Mirage fighter jets for the French air force and has done two tours based at Kandahar in the Afghan war zone. Captain Guyot, who is 33 and a mother, has just made the news by becoming the first woman assigned to la Patrouille de France, the air force display team.

The eight-jet Patrouille is one of the best. It is equal or superior to the US Air Force Thunderbirds and Britain's RAF Red Arrows. Its tight formation aerobatics is breath-taking (watch one of their videos). Every July 14, the team opens the Bastille Day parade with a low-level run down the Champs Elysees trailing their trademark tricolor smoke.

Guyot, whose father was in the military, got the bug with her first flight in a light aircraft at the age of 12. She is due to become commander of the Patrouille from next year. She never saw flying as a men-only job, she says. "Flying a plane nowadays requires finesse more than physical force."

That has been the case for decades. Only in movies do pilots wrestle with the controls. Most planes are flown with the tips of the fingers. The need for delicacy is part of the reason why women make such good pilots -- including aerobatic ones. Look at Patty Wagstaff who in the 1990s was US aerobatics champion three times. When she was asked how a woman could beat men at such a demanding sport, she used to reply: "Do you think the airplane knows the difference?".

Another advantage is female judgment.

Serious money for comic strip heroes in France

The English-speaking world can never fathom the French and continental passion for comic strips.  That disparaging expression does not do justice to the Bande Dessinée, the genre more respectfully known in English as the graphic novel. In the French-speaking countries and beyond, the BD, with its heroes from Belgium's Tintin to Switzerland's modern Titeuf, are not just for kids. They are revered and treated as a serious, ninth art of a kind that mixes the novel and cinema.

La BD (pronounced bédé) is big business. Last year 34 million albums were sold in France. As further proof, a Paris sale of original comic art broke world records last weekend. A cover illustration for a Tintin album went for 764,200 euros (1.22 million dollars). The indian ink and gouache, bought by an anonymous French collector, was drawn in 1932 by Hergé for Tintin en Amerique, the third adventure of his intrepid boy reporter [picture above]. The previous BD record was 177,000 euros, paid a year ago for a drawing by Enki Bilal, one of the titans of the French BD [picture below]

The ecstatic Artcurial saleroom said the auction of 653 items earned 3.4 million euros. "This marks the veritable consecration of the bande dessinée," said Eric Leroy, the house's expert. "People are no long ashamed to say that they collect BDs. The market is expanding fast."

As an honorary Gaul, I have long been a Tintinophile. The nostalgia-inducing tales have a certain magic. Like many French, I recognise lines from his adventures that have passed into the language. For example, everyone knew what le Monde meant the other day when it noted that the bad reputation of one of President Sarkozy's ministers "clings to him like Captain Haddock's Band-Aid" (Le sparadrap du capitaine Haddock). This refers to a running gag involving the whisky-soaked mariner in Tintin's Affaire Tournesol and Vol 714 pour Sydney. On a flight to Beijing with a French Prime Minister a few years ago, I noticed that his staff were briefing up by reading Le Lotus Bleu, Tintin's tale of late 1930s China.

I can also understand the attraction of some of the masters like Bilal, who created post-apocalyptic world that draws heavily on old Soviet bloc life.  And yes, Art Spiegelman has shown in the USA how the comic strip can be used to high brow ends. Yet... I still find it hard to take the bande dessinée as serious art, with its high-brown criticism, annual festival at Angoulême and venerated stars. In the past week, the media have feted the publication of the latest adventure of Blake and Mortimer, a pair of old world military Englishmen who exclaim "by Jove" on every second page. Le Monde's literary supplement on Friday ran a cover on a new BD version of Dickens' Oliver Twist.

A lot of creative work goes into the art and plot of a BD album. They have come a long way from the American comic strips for kids that inspired them in the early 20th century. It's also fair to note that the thriving genre is accessible to young creative talent in a way that the movie industry and classical publishing are not. But I still see them as fast food beside entertainment that takes more mental effort to consume. I'm happy to be contradicted by my French regulars and anyone else, so fire away....

PS: I see that Steven Spielberg is likely to cast Thomas Sangster, a 17-year-old English actor as Tintin when he makes a long-awaited movie version of the cartoon hero this year. Movies of comic strip heroes are rarely as good as the original.  I'll stick to the cardboard and paper version.

[Blake and Mortimer's latest]

Bilal's Bleu Sang sold for record price in 2007]

Italian Carla opens French British affair

                                                                                                                            

France is a little bemused today by the collective swoon of the British over Carla Bruni and her husband since they arrived on their shores. All those superlatives from overheated broadcasters and the the comparisons with Grace Kelly and Princess Diana suggest that les anglais have lost their sang froid. "The English conquered by Carla," said a headline in le Parisien, under its story on "L'Opération séduction du couple Sarkozy à Londres". The British only had eyes for the Italian Madame Sarkozy, noted France2 television. 

There is an interesting precedent.  When JFK landed in France in 1961, he joked: "I'm the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris."

That is of course exactly what Sarko was aiming for when they decided to dress Madame Bruni-Sarkozy in the 60s-retro Dior outfit with pillbox hat -- even if she looked a little like an airline stewardess. Since the night of his election last May President Sarkozy has been trying to remake Kennedy's Camelot. He boasted then: "If you liked Jackie Kennedy, you're going to love Cécilia (His wife at the time)." The idyll started well with JFK style-photoshoots of young Louis Sarkozy playing in the Elysée Palace like the late John-John Kennedy. Their summer holiday in New Hampshire was a nod at the Kennedy clan's New England compound. "Sarkalot" vanished when Cécilia walked out last October taking Louis with her, but she was swiftly replaced by an even more Jackie-looking consort.

Sarkozy, as we predicted, is revelling in all the adulation, not just for his wife and the style of his travelling court but also for the "new honeymoon" that he has opened with Britain, as le Figaro put it today. His speech to Parliament, a love letter to the British unlike anything heard from a French leader, is deemed typical Sarko -- over the top. It's all very well embracing the Brits, but they have to give something in return, I heard from French politician friends. His line about the faltering Franco-German motor was clearly meant to needle Chancellor Angela Merkel. "He stuck the knife in the decades-old contract between Paris and Berlin," France Soir said. "The Franco-German couple might find it hard to get over this infidelity."

Read here for an opinion piece on psyching out Sarko that I wrote in today's newspaper.

And back to the froth: Jackie Kennedy-Onassis did not feature naked in French papers on the morning of her arrival in Paris. Carla's appearance, reproduced in certain British media (last post), was deemed un peu shocking on this side of the Channel. Once again, the British are managing to puzzle the French with their oddness -- that mixture of  formality, irreverence and eccentricity. The royal outfits are an example of the eccentric side. The Queen's hats were described on France Inter radio this morning as inverted saucepots. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, seemed to have perched a partridge's nest on her head, said another radio station.

The British Royal family, for all its centuries of refinement, does bling-bling much better than Sarko, especially with his new demure style, others noted. Reporting from Windsor, Libération had a go, describing the scene at the castle as "l'Angleterre eternelle et kitsch". Its flag-draped streets had a feel of Mickey Mouse, Libé added.

There will be general relief in government circles here late tonight when Mr and Mrs Sarko fly home after another protocol-packed dinner, with the Lord Mayor of the City of London. This was the trickiest foreign trip so far for the French president. So far, at least, it seems that he has not put a foot wrong.    

[Today's Figaro : Franco-British Honeymoon]



Carla Sarkozy's naked portrait goes on sale

One of the most common French searches on the internet lately has been "Carla Bruni nue".  The former super-model posed in her previous life for numerous nude sessions with well-known photographers. By now sets of their work must have done the rounds of just about every French office. Next month, Christie's saleroom in New York is offering the chance to buy an original, at an estimated 4,000 dollars.

The snap, taken by Michel Comte, dates from 1993. The photographer made the future première dame de France, then 25, mime a famous painting by Georges Seurat called les Poseuses (below).

Christies said that it had no qualms about exposing the French president's wife to the public gaze. She was, they said "one of the most beautiful women in the world" and the picture is a work of art. "It was taken when Mademoiselle Bruni was a model and it is a naked portrait in good taste taken by a well known and respectable artist," the Christie's spokeswoman told Agence France-Presse.

The photograph comes from a collection which includes works by Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Richard Avedon et Leni Riefenstahl. Other nudes in the collection include Kate Moss et Naomi Campbell. The sale is to be staged on April 10 -- unless Sarko's image-minders pre-empt it. In the meantime France has spent the day clicking onto the Nouvel Observateur site which is showing the picture. This, you may remember, was the site that incurred Sarko and Bruni's wrath by publishing the text message in which the president was supposed to have asked Cécilia, his last wife, to come back a week before he married Bruni. They seem to be asking for trouble.

 

Sarkozy's royal visit to the Queen

France and Britain are engaging in an ancient exercise this week: dazzling one-another. The occasion is Nicolas Sarkozy's first state visit to Britain. The current monarch of the Fifth Republic arrives on Wednesday with Carla Bruni and a glittering retinue to stay with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, west of London.

For nearly 800 years, the English and French took out their rivalry on battlefields in Europe and then around the world. But admiration was always part of the old enmity, with each side envying the other's superior qualities. The frogs had more style, refinement and dash. Seen from the other side, the perfidious rosbifs were a  stodgy bunch with an infuriating habit of getting their way.

The feuding cousins last fought at Waterloo in 1815 and they officially became friends with the Entente Cordiale accord in 1904, but the rivalry and admiration never faded. State visits -- meaning the full pomp with military salutes and palace banquets -- are an excellent occasion for staging the old contest and both sides are again out to impress the other, in a friendly way of course.

Just like French kings before him, Sarko wants to dazzle the down-to-earth Anglais.

Sarkozy's eyes on the internet

Nicolas Princen, l'oeil de Nicolas Sarkozy sur Internet

Meet the young man they are calling Monsieur Buzz. Nicolas Princen, aged 24, has just been given a job at the Elysée Palace in which he will monitor the internet to keep tabs on what is being said about President Sarkozy.

In three days, Princen, a graduate of the ENS and HEC, two of the grandest universities, has gone from nobody to a figure of cyber-mockery as the blogosphere has laid into him. He is being called "Sarko's spy", "the Sheriff", "Little Brother", "Cyber-cop" and so on. Three Facebook groups have already assembled around him, one of them called Nicolas Princen est sexy. 

Princen's newly-created job is a response to the damage that Sarko has suffered from stories, parodies and videos that have blazed on the net and then reached the main media. In the past month, the president has been zapped hard by two such items: the notorious "pauvre con" video of his outburst at the farm show and the affair of the text message. We've already been through both here. 

Sarko yesterday dropped the charges against Airy Routier, the Nouvel Observateur reporter who posted the text item claiming that the president tried to get Cécilia, his former wife back, only a week before marrying Carla Bruni on February 2. At the same time, Bruni signed an article in le Monde denouncing le Nouvel Obs for pedalling scurrilous gossip unworthy of "real journalism" [my story here]

The Elysée says there is nothing sinister in Princen's appointment. The president's staff is just catching up with the new media. "He will be a sort of monitor of the internet, watching everything that is making a buzz about the President," the Elysée explained. "He will be keeping under surveillance... less-known sites, blogs etc. Everything that is moving on the net. [The presidency was breaking a few linguistic rules there (last post), since they said le buzz and le net in French]

The presidency may insist that his only job is to "observe and alert", but the heavily anti-Sarko blogosphere does not like the idea that this clean-cut young man who worked on the president's election campaign last year (video above) will be sniffing them out and reporting them. There are too many sinister precedents in France, from anonymous informing in the wartime occupation to the late President Mitterrand's secret phone surveillance unit at the Elysée in the 1980s. The sarcasm has been flying thick and fast, with bloggers saying they will report themselves to him with RSS feeds and so on. "Turn your pals in... and help your new friend", said one quoted by le Monde this afternoon.

Luc Mandret, who runs a successful site called Ma vie en Narcisse, addressed Princen with the familliar tu, to offer his welcome: "I wish you courage. If you know a minimum about the world of blogs, you must know that there are several thousand blogs in which you will find unpleasant things about Nicolas Sarkozy."

This of course is not one of them. And I would also add a warm bienvenue to our new reader.   

Help save the French language

Now you can do your bit to save the French language. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister [above] has just opened a site on la toile (better known as le web) which seeks French equivalents for the American-English jargon that has invaded the language. Featured words today are coach, gender and podcasting.

Franceterme.culture.fr is a new weapon in an ancient battle. Les Anglo-Saxons, whose own vocabulary has been part Gallic since the 12th century, are always amused by the attempts of the French state and its language police to defend the purity of the tongue.  Why, wonder smug foreigners, don't the French just laissez faire like the Anglophone nations and allow people to use foreign terms if they think they sounds more chic.

After living for some time on the front line in this war, let me defend France's rear-guard campaign. Yes, I share "Anglo-saxon" antipathy to the idea of policing language. It's silly, smacks of oppressive regimes and it costs a fortune -- hundreds of millions of euros a year are spent on the language bureaucracy and promoting the French language abroad.

Yet... why shouldn't a country seek ways to resist pressure from more powerful cultures -- in this case the USA? Sometimes it works.  In honour of tomorrow's International Day of the French-speaking World, I shall explain:

Beached freighter delights French resort

A cargo ship that runs ashore in a storm is not usually good news or a source of fun. The French port of Sables d'Olonne, a resort, port and sailing mecca on the mid-Atlantic coast, has made an exception this week.

The town (whose name means 'Sands of Olonne') was appalled when it woke on Monday morning to find the Artemis, a Dutch freighter, marooned like a whale on its pristine beach.   Tugs were brought in to haul it off but failed because of falling tide levels. Now they will have to wait to try again with the high spring tides from the second week of April. Luckily the ship is in good condition and is not carrying anything dangerous.

In the meantime, the 88-metre (290 feet) Artemis, has turned into a magnet, pulling thousands of visitors from the region to gaze at it and fill the tills of sea-front businesses in a usually quiet season. That explains why the town website is now marketing the Artemis as a tourist attraction with a live webcam of the beach and a jokey new slogan: "Les Sables d'Olonne: Once you have tried them, you will never want to leave." The last line in the picture says: "World famous welcome for sailors"

If they don't get the Artemis out on the spring tide, the poor ship will no longer be amusing. The mayor wants to cut it up and have all 2,000 or so tonnes taken away in pieces.  But for now they have even put a video on the municipal site here.

[Below, shoring up the Artemis till the spring tides come]

France flocks back to good old days on TV

After camembert and the decision to redraw the map of champagne country, it is time to take a look at another  highly successful celebration of France's terroir, or its rich rural roots.

What does it take for a television network to beat a big football match in prime time ? Manchester United was knocking Olympique Lyonnais, France's top side, out of the European Champions' League the other night, but the French preferred to watch a yarn about a bigoted 19th century widow and her search for virtue.

Seven million people tuned in to the episode from Chez Maupassant, a costume drama that has pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of drawing a mass audience to high-quality television. At the start of its second season, the setting of Victorian-era short stories by Guy de Maupassant, is such a hit that President Sarkozy is using it as an argument to convince broadcasting bosses that the French will watch high-brow television if they do it right (Unfamiliar with modern Britain, he usually cites UK television as his model).

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Don't mess with the camembert, say French cheese experts

I've been having fun lately with France's penchant for regulating everything, but here's a rule worthy of support. It concerns camembert, the pungent Normandy fromage that springs to mind in much of the world when people say "French cheese".

A decision has just been made that will bar producers from using the coveted "appellation côntrolée" (AOC) label that designates genuine camembert if they make it with heat-treated or micro-filtered milk.

If you are outside France, this is theoretical since exported camembert is mostly the chalk-like industrial product that is made from fully pasteurised milk. Real, ancestral camembert, which goes gooey and yellow and carries a whiff of the Norman farmyard, is made only from raw milk. It accounts for a minority of the market even in France, which has only lately rediscovered a taste for authentic cheese. Lait cru (raw milk) is used to make only about 10 percent of the 650 cheeses sold in French supermarkets. 

The "camembert war" was started a year ago by the Lactalis dairy giant and a cheese cooperative at Isigny, in the Calvados département of Normandy, the cheese's home region.

Claude François grooves beyond the grave

Thirty years ago today, Claude François was taking an afternoon bath at his home outside Paris to wash off suntan oil. Standing in the water, he tried to straighten a metal light fixture and the electric shock killed him.

Cloclo, as he was known, was 39 years old and France's biggest star of the pop-disco style. He was a slightly-built, light-voiced singer with a huge following of girl fans. Thanks to an alchemy that takes a little explaining, his death turned him from teen idol into a cult. His albums and DVDs are still selling at a rate of nearly 400,000 a year, making about 10 million euros for Claude junior, his son and the other heirs. Half his 60 million albums have been sold since his death, helping a younger generation ape his kitschy ballads and jaunty tunes in karaoke bars. Provincial clubs are full of professional Cloclo impersonators wearing copies of the 500 sequined suits that he left behind. 

But don't laugh yet, François' best-known composition was the most popular song played at British funerals until it recently gave way to James Blunt's dirge Goodbye My Lover. I am talking about Comme d'Habitude, which François wrote in collaboration with Jacques Revaux. Paul Anka gave it English lyrics in 1969 and sold it to Frank Sinatra with the title My Way. [François' version in video at end of post] 

France prefers women politicians but votes for men

As expected, France has vented its  unhappiness with the Sarkozy administration in the first round of nationwide local elections. The Socialist party, still in a coma at the national level, looks as if it will be controlling most big cities after next Sunday's runoff. They have strengthened their hold on Paris and Lyon. They are on the verge of taking Strasbourg and possibly Marseille and Toulouse from Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement.

But the "red tide" towards the left was not as strong as the Socialists hoped.  François Fillon, the Prime Minister, is out campaigning to limit the damage in next Sunday's run-off  while the unpopular Sarkozy is lying low, with only one outing planned. 

In the meantime, here's a fascinating paradox. The French believe by a strong margin that women make better political leaders than men, according to a CSA poll for le Parisien newspaper. Yet France has one of Europe's lowest levels of female representation in politics.

CSA listed qualities desired in a politician and women won hands down. The French believe that women are more sociable, more in touch with reality, better listeners, more honest, more modern, more brave, more dynamic and more competent, according to the poll. French men rate women politicians as superior, ranking them almost as highly as women do themselves. The only quality in which men give their own kind a slight edge is the "more competent" category. [The poll will be online later today]

France has imposed gender parity rules on candidates in local elections since 2000, yet only 11 percent of mayors are women and only three out of 97 presidents of département councils are female (these county councils are not yet subject to gender parity).  The picture for parliament is not much better. Nineteen percent of members are women. This compares with 33 percent for Germany, 36 percent in Spain and 45 percent in Sweden. But it is still slightly better than Britain's 18 percent.

The CSA poll also asked why women did not make it more in politics. The two main reasons given were the difficulty of combining public and private life (51 percent) and the misogyny of male politicians (47 percent).

Politics is still seen very much as a boy's club, say women politicians. Catherine Achin, a Paris university professor who has written a book on women in politics, says that everyone agrees that women have strong qualities for the work. "But when they start getting near senior posts, they are accused of incompetence." That happened with Ségolène Royal, the Socialist who ran against Sarkozy for the presidency, she noted.

Royal [below] has been making a comeback, using her public popularity to promote her campaign for the party leadership next autumn.  Hostility towards her remains strong in the party's upper ranks, especially among the other plausible successors to François Hollande, the outgoing leader. They are all male of course.

Ten top topics for France this week

It's not surprising that the French are gloomy these days if you look at the news items that are getting their attention. Paris Match offers a regular glimpse with an Ifop poll on the top subjects of conversation at home and in the work place. 

Here are this week's top 10 and an interesting detail from Ifop. Ninety-one percent of people with university degrees said they had discussed President Sarkozy's verbal assault on the man who would not shake his hand at the farm show but only 65 percent of those without higher education did so. Only one topic (Cotillard's Oscar) is straight good news.  It's also worth noting how little sport or entertainment makes the list. The performance of the national rugby team ranked 15th.

1 -- Rising prices and (falling) purchasing power (discussed by 87 percent)

2 -- Sarkozy's exchange with the man at the farm show (77)

3 -- The campaign for local government elections (68)

4 -- The sixth anniversary of capture of Ingrid Betancourt, half-French hostage of Colombian rebels (65)

5 -- The Oscar for best actress won by Marion Cotillard (61)

6 -- The debate over how children should be taught about French Jewish children who died in the Holocaust. (57)   

7 -- Racist behaviour by supporters during football matches (53)

8 -- Sarkozy's decision to end advertising on public television (49)

9 -- Sarkozy's law allowing certain dangerous criminals to be detained indefinitely (delayed for 15 years by the Constitutional Council) (36)

10 -- The Obama-Clinton duel for the US Democratic nomination (36)    

Keith Richards sells French luggage

You remember the uncomfortable appearance of Mikhael Gorbachev in those glossy advertisements for Louis Vuitton, the French leathergoods brand. The picture of the Soviet elder statesman was not just selling luggage, Vuitton told us. It was celebrating the company's corporate "core values" and projecting the notion of "travel as a personal journey".

One wonders what kind of trip the company is trying to celebrate with its latest recruit to its "exceptional journey" campaign: Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. "Keef", now pushing 65, has lent his well-worn features to the camera of Annie Leibowitz in a New York hotel room. His pirate-look is enhanced with black make-up. A skull sits on the night table and death's heads adorn the black scarves draped on the lamps. Keith's guitar case is a custom Vuitton item. A book lies open with a magnifying glass of the kind that such senior citizens use to relieve elderly eyes. Physical sustenance is suggested by a coffee or tea-cup and pot, biscuits and orange juice. There is no hint of the more exotic substances which helped Richards rock through the ages.

The caption says: Some journeys cannot be put into words. New York. 3 am. Blues in C

According to Antoine Arnault, communications chief at Louis Vuitton, Richards is "a world icon, an inspiration for millions". In Le Monde, Arnault also managed a delicate allusion to Richards' more exotic journeys. "He has travelled in lands which I do not personally know," he said. 

I wonder why Richards needed to sign up for the luxury goods campaign,  produced by Ogilvy and Mather. Unlike Mikhael Gorbachev he surely does not need the money.  I apologise for two Vuitton posts in a week, but I wanted to use the great picture.

Why France is grand, by writer-patriot

Let me balance the slightly caustic tone of some recent postings with praise for a book that sums up everything we love about France.

Dictionnaire Amoureux de la France is a love-letter to his country by Denis Tillinac, a prolific writer whose novels mainly celebrate la France profonde, especially his native Corrèze. Tillinac, 60, is an unabashed patriot. I know that he is seen as at bit "reactionary" and a friend of Jacques Chirac, the last and not greatly lamented president.

But Tillinac, a puckish, twinkling-eyed chain-smoker, has a sense of fun and an eye for the quirky side of the French character that is so endearing -- and exasperating. I have got to know him on a TV show that we take part in and I appreciate his eloquent, self-mocking manner.

His book is part of a series from the Plon publishing house, in whi