OxBlog

# Posted 6:35 AM by Patrick Belton

OXBLOG SNUBS CHIRAC: First off, may I note that I love France as a country, a people, and a culture - French people, French literateurs, French intellectuals, French taxi drivers, French joie de vivre, French wine, French food, French cheese, French women (who only get sexier as they get older*), the French capital, the French art of living, the Left Bank, the Right Bank, and many other things French besides. I just happen to mildly disapprove of every political manifestation produced by that nation since roughly, oh, 1400 (earlier if you count the Avignon papacy).

More recently, the world leader the tabloids dub Le Worm has referred to the Anglo-French relationship as a 'kind of violent love,' making you worry slightly for Madame Chirac, and says 'we enjoyed hating each other.' After rather wormily cutting a mutually advantageous deal two years ago with the Germans over the Common Agricultural Policy at a European summit before Mr Blair even arrived, Chirac told the Prime Minister that he (Blair, not Chirac) was 'badly brought up.' Demonstrating the concept, Chirac has since told Blair that the Prime Minister's son Leo (who politely says 'bonjour Chirac' whenever Jacques slithers, sorry enters, Number 10) would not thank him for deposing Saddam, and that Blair was not an 'honest broker' in the world scene because of his amicable relations with Washington. And this, mind you, in the lead-up to a visit to London to celebrate the centenary of, oh, the Entente Cordiale, no less. (A much more classy woman by far, Ma'am Herself had earlier gone to Paris to celebrate the anniversary by delivering a self-composed, well-regarded speech, and this in impeccable French.)

So though Chirac will be speaking at Oxford on Friday, I unfortunately must inform M. le President that I had regrettably already made plans to be washing my hair that day.

* um, just like Jewish Alaskans

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