Y’know, it’s no wonder there’s a ‘history’ between we Brits and the French.
When I saw this, I was expecting to find humourous comments about how bland Brit food is to a more continental palate. Guess that’ll teach me to jump to any more conclusions about the French President’s sense of humour.
French newspaper Liberation says Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin laughed and joined in the banter.
Oh, it’s hilarious. Really. Doubtless Chirac nearly choked on his snails, and I daresay Putin spat cabbage soup all over the table-cloth while Schroeder giggled his way through his Bratwurst-Sauerkraut Balls.
Surprised they didn’t mention turkey (the bird, not the country), but then the USA is written off with an aside about junk food and hamburgers.
I’m sure the Scots and Finns are pi*ssing 'emselves laughing too. I daresay The Sun will have a suitable headline by way of riposte tomorrow morning.
Don’t get yer knickers in a twist Gary. Just remember that most French people did not want Chirac for their president, consider him an arseho in fact. They were obliged to vote for him “holding their noses” in the second round of the presidential election, to make sure Le Pen didn’t get in instead after the catastrophic splitting of the left-of-centre vote in the first round.
The electorate gave him a stinging V-sign when they voted against the European constitution, and that is what is probably what is rattling him - France has lost its leadership of Europe and is now vulnerable to British demands on the CAP etc.
Nah, I’ve no problems with ‘the French’ beyond the normal good-natured banter that’s existed since Agincourt. And of course it’s pretty tough to defend against accusations of blandness where British food is concerned! We did, however, invent Marmite, so there.
But I doubt Chirac’s intemperate remarks will do much for the EC’s Common Agricultural Policy, particularly where farming subsidies are concerned. As I mentioned before, I can’t wait to see what happens when our rabid-at-the-best-of-times gutter press gets a hold of the story. It was interesting to see the Beeb’s ‘olympic’ spin on it already.
It amazes me that this kind of thing is not taken with more humo[uk]r and that it could actually cause policy to be different. [AFDB] You know that the president of France is suffering from low ratings. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was trying look cool in the minds of the common man while at the same time setting up an us against them sort of debate (it seems that the French do not like their union with Europe)[/AFDB]
From a Brit? Remember Agincourt and the storied archers’ taunt. If you don’t know it, the gist is that captured British (Welsh, actually, so the tale goes) archers would suffer having the first two fingers of the drawing hand cut off so as not to pose a future threat. At Agincourt, the legend says that the archers’ line raised the “V” sign to the French as a sort of “in your face” jibe, and serves even now as a form of giving someone “the bird”. If ever you’ve seen that photo of the becigared Curchill showing the “V” sign, it didn’t mean “victory” as I was taught as a child. It was a very real “screw you” to the Nazis.
Just for the record, it now appears that the overwhelming victory of the British at Agincourt had little at all to do with the archers, and more to do with tactical happenstance on the part of the French which left them unexpectedly vulnerable.
I don’t buy that. Churchill made the victory sign with the palm facing out. If you want to make a V-sign to tell someone where to get off, you do it with the palm facing you. Also, the victory sign is static. The V-sign is performed with either a beckoning movement of the hand towards you or a sharp upward thrust.
Churchill was jestering that he lost his cigar, hoping that someone in the crowd would find it, that’s all! Had nothing to do with peace or the the French.
I remember it well! (That’s yours truly looking a trifle startled in the background.) Dear old Maggie, her atttempts at showing “the common touch” almost always backfired. E II R could give a good V-sign, mind you. She never knew, but I spotted Her Maj giving Maggie a topping one once. Ah, heady days.
Thats what I thought, but since I’ve got a digital channel called UKTV History (it should be called UKTV military documentary) I’ve noticed several examples of him using the “V” sign the other way round - cheeky chap!
As for the Brits having a problem with the French maybe its stuff like the following that accounts for it. In a recent programme about two Brits buying an old farmhouse in France and doing it up (All wrong of course) They invited the locals for a meal. One lady, at least 50, reacted with surprise when one of the Brits said his Grandfather had died near the local town in the Great War. Oh really, she said, were there some British in WW1? Try over 3 million British and Commonwealth casualties, 60,000 on the first day of the Somme offensive alone!. Why did we bother, the Germans didn’t declare war on us after all!?
