A people renowned for kisses, knickers, fries and letters

Like me, Bill studied French. Unlike me, he thought he had got the French sussed out

LESS THAN a fortnight ago my wife and I sat having lunch in a small side-street restaurant in Riberac, on market day down in the Dordogne. We were sitting outside on the terrasse. The place was full and everyone was having a great time. The people at the next table had even ordered champagne to finish their meal with (one of them, a lady in a smart suit, was celebrating a new job, and mourning the fact that she had to move to Perigueux to do it). The only thing that marred the occasion for us was that the food was terrible.

I mean, really terrible. The soup was a thin vegetable broth with packet noodles in it. The salad contained what looked like spam. The confit de canard wasn't bad, even if the vegetables were. But having chosen cheese instead of a dessert, I was mystified to find that the cheese selection contained not one fresh cheese. Everything came wrapped in silver paper. On a market day in France, a busy restaurant could not be bothered to buy one fresh cheese. Incroyable!

Later I ventured to mention our experience to some local residents. They were surprised. They had heard such good reports of the place. "No," we insisted, "the food was terrible."

"Maybe," they said doubtfully, "but we have always been told that the ambiance is terrific."

It was certainly true that the place was full of joyful French eaters. And while puzzling over this contradiction I remembered my friend Bill's theory. I knew Bill at Oxford. Like me, he studied French. Unlike me, he thought he had got the French sussed out. "What the French are best at is persuading other people that they are best at things," he said. "If you can do that, you don't actually have to be best at anything."

"Give me an example."

"Certainly. Art. The French have convinced everyone that Paris is the art capital of the world. Well, it was once. There was a time when the French either had the best painters or lured them here. But this hasn't been true for ages. Can you think of a single living French painter?"

"Only Bernard Buffet."

"Who is terrible."

"Yes."

"You can't think of a good living French painter yet you see nothing wrong in Paris being thought of as the world's art centre..."

Bill went on to point out that the French also liked to claim leadership of the world of philosophy by producing some fashionable and disposable school of thought every 20 years. When he expounded the theory to me, he was thinking of existentialism and all that hand-jive. Nowadays he would be thinking of structuralism and all that baloney.

Bill didn't mention wine to me, because in those days even he thought French wine really was the best, but the French have had a harder job talking up their wines in recent years. (I once asked in a French wine shop if they had any Australian wines. "Do they make wines in Australia?" said the man, with a straight face.) But there again, a conjuring trick has been used by the French to maintain supremacy. It is called "vintage years". I once read a booklet about South African wines in which the writer explained that vintage years didn't mean a lot in South Africa because with consistently good weather in the Cape, every year was a good year. Vintage years were only necessary, he said, in countries like France where they often had bad years. It might have been Bill writing the booklet.

There are some areas in which the French are genuinely good and don't have to show off. Rugby. And soccer too, now. Bandes dessinees. Film. Jazz violinists and pianists. Clothes sense. (I am told that punk fashion never worked in France because the French couldn't bear to be that unstylish, and French punks looked ever so chic.)

There are also areas in which the French are genuinely bad. I think TV may be one. Modern pop music certainly is. Johnny Halliday was the first French attempt to produce a genuine rock musician. Not only was he pathetically unsuccessful outside France, he is still, 30 years later their only serious contender as "un rocker" - last week Paris Match had him on the cover prior to a huge series of rock concerts in the capital. It was as if we had never found anyone to replace Tommy Steele.

Well, was Bill right? Whatever the French are good at, are they really best of all at at public relations?

Put it another way. The word "pub" has two meanings in French. When it is masculine, le pub, it means a pub. But when it is feminine, la pub is short for la publicite and means public relations. There is no doubt which the French think is more important and which we do. Well, vive la difference, as someone once said. Frenchman, probably.