NE ME QUITTE PAS

DESPITE APPEARANCES, and with respect to my previous epistle, Nicolas “Napoleon” Sarkozy must surely be considered to be one of the “smarter elements in the class”, having managed to become the head of a country in which – if nothing else – the food and drink are of exceptional quality, thus considerably increasing the joie de vivre of being able to order the best of it and give l’addition to the taxpayer. And, of course, there is the fact that being the head of France attracts trophy would-be Marie-Antoinettes like Valeria “Carla” Bruni, considerably increasing the joie of, and possibly la vie itself when accompanied by the right supplements.

IT IS THUS TRUE TO FORM FROM smart boy Nicolas to upset the apple-cart of our unfortunate leader and his plans for the already-doomed G20 meeting by stating that France will quitter the shebang if things don’t go their way, whatever that way may be. French politicians through the ages, just like many normal French folk and especially their footballers, have mystified the sandwich-bringers who regularly run Britain by being moody, prone to fly off the handle, and unable to understand what is going on around them, qualities which their own, and our, newspapers describe as “deep” or “brooding”, or, at their most journalistically inventive, “pensive”.

YET WHETHER THIS IS UNFORTUNATE OR NOT, one knows that when the cameras start clicking at the summit they will be pointing at the boulevardiers rather than the bourgeois; whether one loves or hates the Sarkozys and the Berlusconis, they are much more fun than the boys who spent their after-school evenings watching tapes of old Star Trek episodes in the garden shed.