France

I love France; I always have. Well not so much the earth and the buildings but everything else. The people, the movies, their style, customs, food, women, the language I mean – what is there not to like?

One of my hobbies or interests is linguistics and sometimes I wish that it would have been languages because if there's one language I would like to be able to speak it's that one – French.

Just laziness; I have spent quite a bit of time there, and usually manage to communicate, but I do regret that part of my education.

People, like me, with English as their first language, are the laziest on earth when it comes to learning foreign tongues and that's my excuse.

But it's not only the language it's their style – even the ugly girls there have a certain sexiness about them.

If you go in to a bank in Britain or a post office you'll see the clerks in their M&S smart suits; in America the post office people will be wearing post office uniforms and in the Bank of America they all wear the same kind of mufti suits; rather like the England football team when they travel abroad.

In France when I went into a bank they were wearing Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent and the like; they looked fantastic.

So when I went to America I was surprised at some of the anti French comments I would hear like ' . . .they wouldn't let us fly over when we bombed . . .' and the total utter rubbish when they wanted to call French Fries, Freedom Fries for a while.

So no I didn't appreciate the derogatory remarks on his Twitter Account by Rob Lowe – an actor who thinks that the meaning of less is more is to look embarrassed.

I have driven through Paris a couple of times but didn't get out of the car. It was the middle of the night in any case and do you know up to that point, and we had travelled about 150 miles from Caen in northern France, it was the first time we saw street lighting.

All the way through the long and winding roads, through small towns and villages the inhabitants were in bed – and this was around nine in the evening and we thought to ourselves – God! How those French know how to live!

And they do – I'm sorry the English will not pronounce the French words with their accents as the Americans do but I have noticed that some of the Tees are not being uttered but people still say the 'S' in Cannes when they shouldn't.

Also the 'T' should be pronounced in the Champagne produced by Moët & Chandon as Moet (with the 2 dots over his 'e') wasn't French.

After all these years I'm always proud when I manage that – here I go again – ë.

So let us all be French today; let us remember the greatest National Anthem in the world – don't forget the best scene in the movie Casablanca with the singing of the La Marseillaise – it is the greatest not because of any chauvinistic choice but because it is the best tune and not necessarily the lyric – that's right, whilst we're at it, lyric; singular.

Vive la France