Salut!

Real McCoy, real disgrace

Where does Bill Taylor, my friend and confrère, stand on the great crisp debate? Well, at least he calls them crisps or affects no raised eyebrow when others do. Chips, as he well knows since he had a proper, northern English life before defecting to the Americas, are something else.

Patrizia Gattaceca: an innocent abroad, or giving comfort to a terrorist?

At a loose end in Paris tomorrow night (Sunday May 23?)

In the 11th arrondissement, at the Reservoir club in the rue de la Forge Royale, you would have the first opportunity in three years or more to see the singer Patrizia Gattaceca live outside her native Corsica.

Twenty euros would get you in - €18 if you bought your ticket at Fnac - and you have the promise of a performance in which Patrizia sings of her devotion to her own lovely island while "dreaming of horizons elsewhere".

The Reservoir publicity describes her as "one of the most courageous women of France", a wonderful singer and poet with material to present from her latest album, Meziorn.

The one piece of missing information is that Patrizia can perform in Paris only because she has another pressing engagement in the capital: her trial for allegedly helping a terrorist on the run.

She is accused of association with criminals and having links to a terrorist enterprise, the specific claim being that she and others on trial harboured or fed Yvan Colonna, the suspected murderer of the préfet of Érignac.

For three years, she has been unable to leave Corsica. It hasn't exactly helped her career.

I do not know how many performers have given shows while on trial for serious offences that could theoretically see them sent away for years.

Patrizia Gattaceca gets her say in court on Wednesday, assuming she does not put her defence into song tomorrow evening.

She has already denied she is a terrorist. She told Journal du Dimanche in an interview before the trial began that she while she stood accused of disobeying one law, she had obeyed another, the duty to show hospitality and solidarity towards someone she considered innocent.

And of course I do not know whether she is guilty of the crimes with which she is charged, and I also regard her as innocent until and unless the courts rule otherwise.

She would never deny her nationalist sympathies. What Paris calls Metropolitan France is therefore, to her, just France, another country than her own. Standing trial on the banks of the Seine, singing in the 11th arrondissement, she is - on her own terms - an innocent abroad.

And this is what she sounds like ...

Cannes en fête

Salut! followed Sir Michael Jagger to Cannes. He had a film to push, we had a daughter to deposit for a Rome-bound train, or rather the first of three that would take her there.

That wasn't the train. It was going the wrong way, to Grasse, but it was from the same station.

Mick, whose former wife Jerry Hall has a place very near to ours, popped up speaking French to France 2 and in Nice-Matin. I thought he did OK, but then I am in a glass house and should not throw stones. France 2 was surprisingly the more obsequious, asking him to take off his sunglasses for a moment so his adoring fans could see all his face, Nice-Matin pointed out that he had made some petites fautes, citing "cette film".

Who did I see? Lots of determined-looking young ladies striding purposefully along the Croisette, demanding to be noticed. Lots of gawpers. And Jamel.

Who?

Jamel Debbouze, whose film about French injustice towards Algerians who fought on her side, Hors La Loi, is creating a stir at the festival.

No Mick, and no one else except on posters. But he seemed contented on the telly and clearly enjoys being in France.

That left lunch. Didn't have the heart to follow Jamel into his beach restaurant of choice, but popped into one a few more steps along the seafront.

My mobile buzzed occasionally with contributions to an amusing thread, on an e-mail list to which I subscribe. I had pompously declared myself as loathing ketchup, HP sauce, baked beans and mayonnaise made with sugar. Disgracefully, I proceeded to order none of those things, but an equally English-style comfort food lunch of omelette and chips, eschewing the marinated fish salad that was also on the menu, and should really have been ordered.

Sunday roasts, posh Indians and tapas

In my hardluck tale from the island of Port-Cros, where I had a rather more royal feast than intended, I promised culinary tales from London and the accents - and food detail - missing from part one.

Putting the cart ahead of the horse, I will briefly describe my UK dining experiences.

Mark their words (1): happiness

The first in an occasional series that needs no explanation (I wondered about my elder daughter's assurance, after spending a couple of days at the Cannes film festival, about the story that certain UK journalists translated Violent Poison as Violent Fish, but can find no evidence that it appeared anywhere ...):

From today's Journal du Dimanche, reporting on the welcome release of the French student Clotilde Reiss by Iran, albeit on payment of what amounts to a ransom (a "fine" of 250,000 euros, plus at least the suspicion of prisoner exchange, for having sent home innocent mobile phone images of last year's anti-government protests) ...

..... un happy end .....

Provençal skies that need no words

For 19 months or more, Salut!'s millions of readers knew where they stood. Come Saturday morning, they'd find the words column, reproduced here with frilly extras.

From French follies to the hard times of old England (1)

Stand by for some foodie tales based on recent experiences in France and the UK. The first part deals with the French follies. Lean pickings in England to follow ...

A first offence of leaving the table after a superb lunch, but feeling a shiver of self-disgust at not having realised how much it would cost, already suggests carelessness. To repeat the misdemeanour in most of its detail goes beyond recklessness.

Salut!'s election jottings

Observing, for the sake of election day propriety, a rare neutrality, Salut! will say only that, as the splendid Oysterband once put it, it'll vote a certain way (they said which way), but it won't inhale.