There, said it. With those three words, Philip Delves Broughton, my predecessor as Paris correspondent of The Daily Telegraph (and where's that copy of your new book you promised me, Philip?), began a highly entertaining piece of nonsense about the supposed awfulness of French food. Now I've had a "there, said it" moment of my own ....
This is something an Englishman is never supposed to admit. But I feel a sudden, overwhelming urge to say the unsayable: I like Jacques Chirac.
It is as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Received wisdom in the UK holds that the former president is a crafty old charlatan. In fact, the tabloids are often harsher still. The Sun once distributed spoof front pages in Paris depicting him as a worm, not realising the insult was utterly lost in translation.
But why do I have a soft spot for Chirac? I will answer my own question, though some would say I have simply gone native, swayed by French whims.
It is true that even with criminal proceedings for alleged corruption casting a cloud over his future, he has just been named, jointly with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former socialist minister who heads the International Monetary Fund, the most popular political figure in France. A poll in the magazine Paris Match put him streets ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy.
And a slide show at the website of my local newspaper, Var-Matin, contains 44 images of Chirac on a visit to St Tropez. He poses with tourists, strokes pets, signs autographs and produces a hearty smile wherever the photographers pursue him along the quayside and charming narrow streets of the port.
For me, Chirac combines gravitas with the common touch. At ease with ordinary people, he nevertheless looks like a statesman, carries himself with dignity and speaks with clarity and precision (even I can understand him).
When he was the president, we were moderately close neighbours. The Elysée was a 10-minute walk from my office-cum-flat; the presidential holiday retreat, the Fort de Brégançon, which he favoured as Sarkozy does not, takes roughly the same time to reach by car from my own home in the south.
On one of the occasions we met, I was among hundreds of journalists at a traditional New Year media reception. But he made time for me as he does for each farmer and petit commerçant who crosses his path. It was the sort of encounter that worked for both: the reporter gets his quote, TV cameras are on hand to capture the beaming president’s accessibility.
There have been Chirac gaffes. But when microphones pick up his loose talk, it usually seems funny rather than outrageous. Trying to convince Russian and German leaders in 2005 that Paris, not London, should be awarded the 2012 Olympics, he was overheard saying: “The only thing that the British have ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease. You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine.”
It matters little that his final point has not been true for rather a long time. The aside revealed the warmth and humour of a man whose company you know you would quite enjoy even if you quarrelled about politics
But mindful of a forthcoming return to Britain, I should express the hope that it is not yet an offence against the state to declare: “Vive la France. Vive l’ancien président.”
* from my East/West column in The National, Abu Dhabi.
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