What do Emma Mackey, winner of the Bafta rising star award, and Mme Salut have in common?
Well, three things to be totally accurate. Both were born in Le Mans, both headed when young to northern England and both encountered the same cultural shock once there.
Mackey, who has starred in the Netflix series Sex Education and Death on the Nile as well as Emily, the fictionalised portrayal of Emily Bronté that brought her the Bafta by public vote, was brought up by a French father and English mother, in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, not far from Le Mans and moved to Leeds after her bac to study English language and literature.
There, she once told The Daily Telegraph, she made her shocking discovery.
“I’d seen nothing like it. I was a very naive French girl in this huge northern city in the era of chokers and house music – and was like, ‘Oh my god, you all get drunk four times a week. How do you get up next morning to study?' [they didn't was the Telegraph's helpful reply]."
Joelle, the Sarthoise I married, felt the same when she moved to Darlington some years earlier. We met when she turned up at the Golden Cock pub, where I ran a folk club someone had told her was worth a visit. "I couldn't believe how much they all drank - even girls with pints of beer," she has said more than once.
Outside Darlo's celebrated Golden Cock, 45 years on
Flossie Maliavialle is another French woman who thought Darlington was the place to head for (must be something to do with the name, which you could translate romantically as ville de chéri(e)s ou choux choux whereas Joelle's option as an au pair was Cockfosters, which I shall leave untranslated).
Flossie is a singer, a very good one and folk clubs were among her natural venues before the pandemic forced a career change, but she pulled no punches in this interview with me: "The consumption of alcohol in this country never ceases to amaze me, Appalling rather than amazing really."
Now I've seen some energetic drinking in la Sarthe and elsewhere in France. But it is true that wine consumption, for example, is significantly down there and especially the red kind, perhaps a consequence of a declining appetite for red meat.
Some French customs hold strong, though, and the one that comes mischievously to mind is the penchant of certain of its hommes politiques for the sort of dodgy dealings that would shame even the likes of Boris Johnson.
Emma Mackey had a headmaster as a father and it is unlikely that her family did not rub shoulders with another local Franco-Britannique family, the Fillons. Years before becoming prime minister and even more years before he and his Welsh wife Penelope had their collars felt by the long arm of the French law, Le Mans-born François Fillon was the mayor of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, which Wikipedia unkindly says should explain why such a small place has a TGV station.
But here, for now, to Le Mans. Let us all raise a glass to my city-in-law and the city of not only the 24 Heures (about to celebrate its 100th anniversary) but Emma Mackey Margeret Marie Tachard-Mackey, Joelle Marie Simone Poupard and our François whether your preferred "down the hatch" phrase is cheers or santé, bottoms up or et glou.
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