Salut!

La corrida, that well-known slice of ... which country's national heritage?

This is the one bull that, so far as anyone could tell, got away. It didn't want to fight, probably having heard it was hardly an even contest, and frustrated all the efforts of picadors and matador to goad it into a suitably combative mood.

And so, maybe to its own surprise, the bull was spared the matador's sword, and was hurried out of the ring to whatever fate awaited it.

Nevertheless, a bull is pretty much a bull and looking at that photo is unlikely to help you answer the headline's question.

Mother and Baby, Papy and Maya

If you buy it in the shops for £2.70, you get a free disposable nappy (newborn size) and a chewy oat biscuit. Salut! doesn't run to such gifts, or very often to great cartoons like James Benn's. But this, more or less, is what appears under my name in this month's edition of the magazine Mother & Baby ...

For years, I feared grandfatherhood. Not in the sense of finding it scary, more for what its arrival would tell the world - and me - about my age.
Like many men of advancing years, I keep up the pretence that I am still young or, at any rate, young at heart.

At the leisure centre, I still run around after a shuttlecock as if life depended on reaching it before feathers or cork hit the ground. At football, I leap from my seat when my team scores. I even try to give modern music a listen before exclaiming: “Not like it was in my day …”

Evenings in the Var, with dutiful reflections on Ryan Giggs and Sir Alex

I would sooner be thinking about the view from Le Club, the fabulous hotel at Cavalière where David Cameron's father spent the last holiday of his life and where it is possible to take aperitifs without breaking the bank, or the Var night sky as seen from my house. Or even the glorious train journey along the coast to Nice and Menton. But maybe I should just get this off my chest first ...

Time to forget DSK, if only for now (I've written, here and elsewhere, as much I'll ever really want to say but suspect duty will dictate otherwise).

Ian Evans wondered whether I would be commenting on the Ryan Giggs case. First reaction: I have written nothing on him so far and that is already more than I'll ever want to say.

DSK: when power corrupts

In the e-mail inbox today came an invitation to endorse a committee of support for the African woman Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of attempting to rape. It was from the French writer, historian and staunch anti-discrimination campaigner Claude Ribbe (above), whom I met when living in Paris.

The entirely mischievous headline he has used at his blog reads: "Je ne suis pas raciste. La preuve? Je viole même des négresses." No translation really needed.

Woody Allen's Paris: a spell not to be broken

Image: Sony Pictures Classics

Have you ever watched a film you consider highly entertaining only to wonder whether it is really a load of nonsense? But still entertaining.

That was the feeling I had at moments during Woody Allen's new romantic comedy, Midnight in Paris, which I saw - cheating: version originale (unlike the Sarko film which I stoically watched in French) - soon after its premiere at the Cannes festival.

Is DSK paying the price for Polanski's flit?

You might think a man married to a Franco-American, heading the Washington-based IMF and wanting to be president of France would hardly be the type to abscond while on bail. But while American courts frequently make decisions that look pretty dumb, as they'd call it, they are smart enough to remember the case of Roman Polanski. Any Frenchman on serious charges, even Dominique Strauss-Kahn or maybe especially him, can therefore expect one heck of a fight to get out pending trial. This is a simple reminder of a piece from Salut! two years ago as Polanski fought his ultimately successful battle to avoid belated extradition; not all of it is relevant to today, but it had to be all or nothing and enough seems pertinent to make it worth reproducing as it originally appeared. The episode was mentioned in support of objections to DSK's plea for bail ...

The nearest I have come to meeting Roman Polanski was in 2005, in Paris. British judges, in the established traditions of the judiciary, had disgracefully allowed him to sue an American magazine in a London court, and to testify by video link from France to ensure no unpleasantness with the law over that pesky old child abuse business back in California.

As a reporter based in the French capital, I made an optimistic pitch for an interview which would have run at the end of the case. It was to be a happy outcome for Mr Polanski since the jury, denied access to important defence evidence, did what libel juries do, found in his favour and awarded him a handy little windfall of £50,000.

DSK: a posh Porsche, sex and the conspiracy theories sweeping France

Graphic: Courtesy of Topito blog

Until a few seconds after 7am yesterday, I was looking forward to seeing publication within a day or so of a piece of mine about Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the gauche caviar.

Then the France Info newscaster began talking about the political landscape being turned upside down by barely credible events from New York.

Amid the beautiful people of Saint-Tropez, the killing starts

It hovered for a split second above my left hand before trying to settle beside the little finger. And then it was dead.

The taking of life may be wrong but when the victim is a mosquito, guilt level is low. This was my first kill of the year and, though I have already spotted the odd intruder at home, I had to visit the superplush Byblos hotel in Saint-Tropez to perform it.

Veiled ambitions

Image: Touche Pas à Ma Constitution

If Rachid Nekkaz becomes the next president of France, remember that you read about him here first.

Of course, you may have heard of him already in which case you should disregard that opening sentence.

Rachid put his name forward as a candidate for the Parti Socialiste on the same day Sarko's ailing UMP party held its contentious debate on secularism, more generally interpreted as a debate, and quite possibly an ill-considered one, on Islam.

But he is also a campaigner for the Muslim women who, under the new law that came into force last month, now face fines for wearing face-covering burqas in public.

Goodnight Irene, and bon voyage

Combine a good, honest Bordeaux wine, the romance of the sea and the history of Anglo-French trade and you have the making of something that rises above public relations hype to become a genuinely fascinating adventure.

This week, I spoke for the first time to a man whose work has been known to me for decades: Tony Laithwaite.