By Badmoiselle Hallay

Okay. I know I’m going to get into the biggest trouble of my life from writing this article: I can already see the hate mail, sent from saddie UK  ISPs from people with email addresses like ReggieKrayFan@shite.co.uk telling me I’m ‘ignant’ and that ‘Britian is the greatest country on earth’ (NOTE:  The lower echelon of Britain’s xenophobe are pathologically unable to spell the name of their nation correctly.  Ever.)  So yeah, I know I’m going to get into trouble for this article (as I do for more or less everything I write on KIU), but now that I’m officially employed as an investigative journalist (for the fashion business; gloves are BACK!), I feel I owe it to the world at large to offer up some evidence I’ve unearthed that might – just might – show Britain in a different light when placed next to its neighbour, the ever-unpopular France.

	Fought a revolution to liberate its people from the strangling reigns of monarchy, the head of Louis VXI sliced from its body by the deadly stroke of Madame Guillotine, crowds cheering as the rues of Paris turned to rivers of blood!
	Has Prince Charles.
	Obsessed with Le But de la Vie.
	Obsessed with the butt de  Kylie.
	Newspapers report news of both domestic and international significance
	“POSH n’ BECK in SHOPPING HORROR!”
	Every street has its own café. Privately owned and as individual as the moustachioed proprietor, there is always a friendly ‘bon soir!’ as you walk through the door and find yourself engulfed by the smoke of the Gaulloise and the charm of the regulars.  Settling down into a corner seat, you watch the cavalcade of characters in the mirrored wall, a steaming espresso placed in front of you as you light a cigarette and open your leather notebook, the tinny strains of an old Edith Piaf song playing from some distant radio, the ouvriers  - tired but happy after a hard days work – ordering Ricard at the bar as they argue about politics, religion and women.  It could be the 1930s.  It could be the 1830s. You feel as if you are part of something timeless – something infinite – a microcosm of French life captured with Daguerreotype precision in the frosted glass of the café door.
	Starbucks.
	Cheese!
	(Cheddar.)
	Has Kul-Un-Ta (reality T.V show where people are stranded on a desert island for six weeks with nothing but a bag of rice and the weaponry needed if reduced to cannibalism.)
	Has The Salon (reality T.V show where people are stranded for an hour at the hairdresser’s.)
	Is snooty.
	Is snotty.
	Treats celebrities with respect.
	“POSH PORKING-OUT IN PANTYLINE SHOCKER!”
	Gets television hosts to band together to raise money for the uneducated, illiterate, and cerebrally challenged.
	The uneducated, illiterate, and cerebrally challenged are television hosts.
	No discernable class system.
	“Nice enough person, but just a tad common.”
	No discernable class system.
	“Bit posh, in’tch ya?”
	Have ninety-nine thousand expressions (non pleasant) for a pregnant woman, including ‘up the duff’, ‘in trouble’, ‘bun in the oven’, ‘caught out’ and ‘in the club’.
	Have one expression for a pregnant woman: Encient. (pregnant)
	Had no good Art from 1830 (Turner) to 1950 (Peter Blake).
	Delacroix, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Lautrec, Caillbot, Seurat, Gaugin, Manet, Picasso, Braque, Duchamp, Delauney (oh, Christ - I've made my point.)
	Has the Euro!
	Doesn’t have the Euro because it wants to hold onto it’s ‘sovereignty’ and doesn’t want to lose its ‘cultural identity’. (Which probably explained why it ripped out all its red telephone boxes and closed down all the mines.)
	20 fags costs four euros.
	20 fags cost more than I could ever afford.
	Eiffel Tower.
	Blackpool Tower. (Okay. That one was a bit unfair, cuz The Blackpool Tower is dead good and – in my opinion – a lot prettier than Gustav’s effort.)
	Has La Marianne, the female personification of France.  Strong and beautiful, La Marianne not only represents the country, she serves to illustrate the national regard for women as the spiritual and emotional backbone of French culture.
	‘Page Three’.
	In Britain, if you tell someone you write books, they say; ‘Yeah, but have you ever had any of ‘em published or anything? It’s really hard to get a book published, you know.’
	In France, they say; ‘You write books? What are they about?’ (And in America, they say; ‘You write books?! Swell! You’ve gotta meet Abe Goldstein! He’s my mother’s first cousin’s best friend and he’s BIG at Random House.  He’ll get you a deal.  Five thousand.  TEN thousand.  Kid, we’re gonna make a MILLION with your books!…’)
	There is no such thing as the ‘wrong side of forty’.
	“OLD SPICE! AGEING GERI IN WRINKLE SHOCKER!”
	We’ve got WINE here, man!  GALLONS of it!  And it’s CHEAP!
	You’ve got our wine. Give it back. You can’t afford it over there.
	Violent rioting spills onto the streets if it looks as if there might be a tiny breach in the Rights of Man.
	Violent rioting spills onto the streets if it looks as if Arsenal might score.
	Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
	He wouldn't dare try it on over here. (Interestingly, the Interior Design craze has never taken off in France. There are no Changing Rooms type shows on T.V, there are no do-it-yourself stencil kits. Why? Well, I don't think the French are that bothered about tarting up their homes because they're hardly ever there. Too much stuff to do outside.)
	The cult of Celebrity Chefs.
	Jamie qui?
	The French love the English.
	The British hate the French.
	Had the integrity and belief in the wrongness of the War in Iraq to denounce the lies about weapons of mass destruction and stay out of the war whilst other nations did their best to clamber up George W’s arse.
	“Any room up there for Cherie?”

	Most of the French can speak English...
	...and most of the English cannot.

And on that Henry Higgins note, I shall finish my incredibly fair and unbiased comparison between La Belle France and The 51stState.  But I think that upon examining the evidence, we can all agree that Britain has become a sad, bitter and venomous nation , whilst France…..

Well.

VIVRE LA FRANCE!

(And give us our wine back; I need more than you do.)