Salut!

Expat life: impersonating the French

An Algerian security official did once tell me, while I was reporting on an aircraft hijacking at Algiers airport, that I was a dead ringer for the equally hairless Alain Juppé, then France's interior minister. That was the nearest I'd got to passing myself off as a Frenchman until I brought my little Var-registered Renault Clio to London ...

On a two-lane motorway, the juggernaut just ahead of me suddenly drifted over from the nearside lane without hint of a signal.

At first I thought the driver had fallen asleep, but he then spent at least five minutes inching past a fractionally slower vehicle as a queue built up behind him.

Forgive me for saying the element of danger took me straight back to the Abu Dhabi-Dubai motorway. But it happened in northern France and the juggernaut was from Belgium, reinforcing my belief that Europeans can claim no high moral ground over the drivers of other continents. Rotten driving occurs wherever there are roads.

Anna Friel, nudity and one very big head

Some heads simply should not be allowed inside theatres.

The last time I was close to Anna Friel was in the Groucho Club, a London West End luvvies' hangout. I was there as a member of Stephen Fry's party; he didn't know it, but someone who had been invited had asked me along too. Anna was seated at a piano, singing a great song written by my proxy host, Kate Rusby.

The other night found me in row E, which means fifth from the front, for Anna's excellent performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's at the superb Theatre Royal in Haymarket. I thought at first she and others in the cast were struggling a little with American accents, but found myself utterly won over in the second part; she also sings two or three of songs, accompanying herself on guitar, by way of a bonus.

Much had been made of Anna Friel's nude scene. Now, she is a beautiful woman and few men would turn away from such a sight. I am no prude, but decided against standing up, the only way I could have witnessed it.

For directly in front of me was the largest, widest head I have sat behind in decades of theatre and cinema attendance. I couldn't just move my own head slightly to the left or right, hoping not to inconvenience someone behind. I would have had to place it cheek-by-jowl with my neighbour.

So the nude scene essentially came and went. If Miss Friel's modesty was preserved in only one part of this lovely theatre, it was preserved in the view from row E, seat four. I'd need to locate, all over again, a prurient piece in the Daily Mail to see what I missed.

And please do not ask me to feel grateful that when Miss Friel's male co-star, Joseph Cross, also appeared in the buff, I had a much better view thanks to the different portion of the stage where he could, in all his glory, be seen.

Expat life: false steps in fashion

For meetings in public with their own daughters, parents should tread carefully in their choice of clothing and, especially, footwear. We failed the test, as I report in today's East/West column in The National, Abu Dhabi ...

The complete story of what I know about fashion would detain no one for long.

But even I could understand a young friend’s description of the shame she felt when her parents arrived on a visit one Saturday during her undergraduate days at Cambridge University. They were wearing matching shell suits.

Expat life: lost and found

Somewhere, I have a photograph of me sitting on a small boat in the bay of Villefranche, east of Nice. Taken by a friend's son, it captures the exact moment my mobile phone slipped - without any human eyes noticing - from the pocket of my shorts on its way to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Not all of the things I mislay are lost quite so comprehensively, however ...

One warm Abu Dhabi evening, a taxi driver collected four of us, including a colleague who had just flown in from Canada, outside The National’s offices, and dropped us for dinner at a hotel. And then drove away with our colleague’s luggage in the boot.

In life’s catalogue of lost and found stories, this was one with a happy ending. My custom was to note the mobile phone numbers of taxi drivers who spoke good English. As luck would have it, ours did. We were able to call him immediately and he readily agreed to return.

Expat life: looking east

The number of Muslims in France is usually put at five million. Since by law, no one can be asked to declare a religion in a census, this is guesswork. The true figure is probably higher. So it is hardly any great surprise that the Muslim community - Europe's largest - should figure so much in my reports on France for The National, a newspaper based in the Middle East ...

A book I recently rediscovered, by the Canadian journalists Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, bears the catchy title Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong and sets out, with much success, to explain why the French should be judged on their own terms - "resolutely modern and ferociously archaic at the same time" - and not on anyone else's.

The Beatles and Nostalgie radio: a perfect match

Attacking the Beatles is a little like having a go at the Queen Mother used to be. Much-loved, untouchable national institutions and all that.

This weekend, France's golden oldies station, Nostalgie, which seems to have the shortest playlist of any station I have come across, has been dipping liberally into the package. There was even a pre-recorded clip of Paul McCartney saying something like: "Hi, this is Paul on (cue for exaggerated French accent) Nostalgie." The Beatles and Nostalgie were made for each other.

So everyone's happy? Well, as fans form an orderly queue for mortgages to buy the Fab Four's remastered, 16-album back catalogue - the finance is necessary because it will set you back £170, or a whacking 210 euros if you do your shopping in France - let's remember that some people didn't actually like the Beatles.

Take Jeremy Robson, last seen in these parts when writing about the wartime loss of an RAF Lancaster in Burgundy.

In quiet moments at the Blackcats list, a superior e-mail forum for thinking fans of Sunderland AFC, Jeremy - a Murton lad now living in Canada - gets discussions going on extra-curricular matters. Music is a popular choice.

Our tastes do not really coincide. From time to time, I gingerly mention my folkie artists in these discussions but the singers and musicians I admire would be unknown to most of those subscribing to the list (though a reference by me to Fairport Convention the other day did get someone simpering about the late Sandy Denny's glorious song, Who Knows Where The Time Goes?)

On the Beatles, Jeremy is adamant, if uncharacteristically defensive to start with: "I don't want to upset anyone. I also realise I am in a minority but is there anyone out there who, like me, just absolutely hates the Beatles?"

I repeat the question here because I have belatedly realised that Jeremy sent it in error to me instead of the Blackcats list.

And my answer?

No, I never hated them. In their time, I thought them magnificent. I even traded for a short time on the belief among a few short-sighted lasses in Shildon, County Durham that with my long hair - yes, I had hair then - I looked a little like Paul.

I agree however, with a Guardian review in which Tim de Lisle said that as the singles got stronger and stronger, the albums broadly got worse. And I won't be splashing out on the re-issues. I would also say that while the Beatles generally created the better songs, the Rolling Stones were the more exciting band by a mile. What do others think?

And what, for that matter, do you think of the Fleet Foxes, about whom Jeremy and others have been raving of late?

Expat life: crisp thoughts

For another dip into the East/West basket, which contains the midweek columns I write for The National, Abu Dhabi, I chose a subject close to the heart (and probably doing the heart no good in the process): my love of potato crisps. But only if they're crisp-flavoured ...

The effects of poor dietary habits are evident everywhere.

Even so, there is growing public awareness of the need for healthier eating and I like to think I do my bit. If a salad is placed in front of me, I will eat it even if it would not be my first choice. Increasingly, I prefer seafood to red meat; I eat green vegetables, drink tea and coffee unsweetened and put tins back on supermarket shelves if sugar is among the ingredients.

Expat life: wait for it

My colleagues at The National, Abu Dhabi have kindly agreed that I can reproduce my weekly expat column, East West, at Salut! just as I do My Word each Saturday. East West often covers the same sort of ground that is explored by Salut! Since my priority is to write for a living, subjects that would once have been addressed only here therefore find a platform in the newspaper. A certain resident of Toronto (the lesser, Canadian version, not the bustling metropolis on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland) will recognise himself somewhere in this piece about restaurant and cafe service ...

Holidays over, I wonder how many people have returned to the Emirates from visiting France with tales of surly or incompetent service in cafes and restaurants.

In my experience, you have to be unlucky to receive impolite or inattentive treatment when out for a meal or snack in the UAE. In Europe, the rudeness of the French, and especially waiters, is a staple of post-holiday conversation.

Following Lorik Cana from the south of France to Sunderland

If Lorik Cana, formerly of Marseille, can do it, so can I. He exchanged the south of France for the much grittier qualities of North East England and has not so far been heard to moan about it in any of the half dozen languages he speaks.

When the French kissing has to stop

Catherine Sanderson - aka Petite Anglaise - had another kind of French kiss in mind, but the cover of her novel seemed a good way of illustrating this short item ...

Funniest thing on French TV last night, or the TV I saw, came in the first item of the news.

Yesterday was la rentrée for millions of children, back to school after the summer holidays. France is enjoying its share of the international Grippe A hysteria, Grippe A being what it more primly calls the condition we are forced to recognise as swine flu.

And in the main headlines of the France 2 8pm bulletin came the most dramatic effect of the scare: les bisous interdit!

Anyone who has had to wait in turn to be the umpteenth person to exchange kisses to the cheek, often with relative strangers, in France will instantly see what a deprivation it must have been for those poor children, unable to hug and kiss their friends.