Salut!

And suddenly the summer's over as top French hotels prosper

Andy Roberts

I parked with ease in town this morning. The seafront entertainment will soon be over and a few restaurants have closed already, at least on certain nights. Never accuse the French of being less than rigid when it comes to holiday timetables (though they do have the rituals of la rentrée to contend with) ...

Most of us like to push the boat out when we can.

The headline writer at The National understandably zoomed in on the cost of a night in the Suite Royale at the Plaza Athénée on the avenue Montaigne in Paris's eighth arrondissemnt. No, I couldn't afford €22,000 either, no matter how many Randalls I could fit into the huge space the suite affords.

Nor could I stretch to the €10,000 charged for the best suite at the Hotel du Palais, converted from Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie's little Atlantic retreat in Biarritz, a town I have never visited.

Pop, profanity and the legacy of Peregrine Worsthorne

Sak Noel and Esthera Sarita

French music stations and tourist bars are awash just now with profanity - in English. No one bats an eyelid; they just join in ...

The most important blot on Sir Peregrine Worsthorne's career is not that he was the second person, beaten to it only by Kenneth Tynan, known to utter the four-letter word beginning with F on British television.

He had previously been an enthusiastic supporter of the pre-Taliban US campaign of persecution of left-wing sympathisers in the murky era of Senator Joe McCarthy, and that was far, far worse. Answer yes to "Do you have, or have you ever had, a mind of your own?" and you risked never working again.

Song of the Day: its days numbered

One of the things I appreciate about France, possibly in an expat minority of one, is that a major national television station will cheerfully devote more than three hours of its peak viewing schedules to folk music.

It happened last night when France 3 gave over the important evening slot beyond 8.35pm to live performances from the les nuits interceltiques, shown to coincide with the 40th annual Celtic festival in Lorient - an event I once attended and hugely enjoyed - and a related concert.

Even a folkie can be honest and admit that a little pipe music - Breton pipes, Scottish bagpipes, Galician pipes, Uillean (Irish) or Northumbrian pipes - goes an awful long way. I wearied of it after a while last night. But I'd sooner have an occasional overdose, as here, than nothing, more commonly my experience in the UK.

French school trips: je ne regrette rien

Bill Taylor's photo, not mine as fondly imagined

I don't write only for The National. Others come calling from time to time, too, and I don't just mean Mother & Baby. here is one I prepared earlier, actually quite a bit earlier but published today in my occasional Times Educational Supplement column ...

My great friend Pete Sixsmith, on the point of retiring after a lifetime's service to teaching (and you should have seen the Facebook tributes from past pupils), once swore to me he would never again accompany a school trip overseas. A rampant blame culture had persuaded him that if anything went wrong, teacher would probably carry the can, perhaps all the way to court.

His pronouncement seemed final until Pete rang me in Paris to say he'd be with the school near the Eiffel Tower, expected to have some free time and would love to meet.

What got me writing about the broader subject of school trips was not so much the heavy responsibilities resting on teachers' shoulders, but the question of whether they are much more than a jaunt for all concerned. Do they actually offer much by way of encouraging or helping teenagers to learn the language of the country they visit?

And the thoughts that then came to mind took me back to my own childhood of deprivation in that one minor respect ...

DSK: honours and dishonour even?

The collapse, subject to the appeal on behalf of the accuser, of the sex crimes case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn inspires several thoughts:

* did the US justice system, after an appalling start in the affair (perp walk, harsh remand decision, draconian bail conditions all giving the impression that guilty verdicts had already been delivered), redeem itself by reaching the appropriate conclusion?

* or would a poor defendant have stood no chance against such odds?

* can the French media ever again point accusing fingers at the conduct of "Anglo-Saxon" journalists, having routinely named the accuser (ie long before she chose to put her identity in the public domain) in defiance of practice observed by all decent media outlets everywhere?

* based solely on the headlines they ran, insulting DSK and the alleged victim in turn, it can be reasonably said that the New York tabloids can hardly look back on their conduct with pride

* can DSK be taken seriously in any senior public role after his admission to what his lawyers call "consensual" sexual relations with a stranger in his hotel room, a dalliance of which he said "not to be proud"?

* will the French press be more vigilant about the future behaviour, even in private if that behaviour has a damaging impact on others, of important, powerful men?

* or will the climate of hatred towards journalists and the desire for ever-tighter media regulation, drifting across the Channel as a result of the hacking scandal, increasingly force newspapers and broadcasters to kowtow to authority and resort to reporting the news by press release?

St Tropez ... trop calme?

The positive thing to say about the view you see above of the harbourfront at Saint Tropez is that if all, or most, of the giant yachts are absent, it must be because they have been hired and are doing their day jobs.

But I have never seen the town so quiet on a Sunday afternoon in August. Indeed, I cannot recall seeing the place so quiet on any previous visit from early spring to late autumn.

When the charms run outs out: Frenchmen behaving badly

If criminal charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn are dropped tomorrow, as the US media evidently believe they will be, that will not in itself enable the former IMF managing director to assume the reputation of a man whose conduct towards women has always been exemplary.

And whatever explanations have been advanced for Gérard Depardieu's extraordinary toilet habits on board a departing aircraft, it is reasonable to raise questions about his demeanour.

But can we damn a whole nation of men on account of DSK and Depardieu's excesses? Of course not. Even so, you can allow yourself a spot of fun at their expense before accepting the need to keep a sense of proportion.

And I hope Gigi, a long-standing admirer of Depardieu's, does not mind too much the reproduction of her priceless comment ...

Drunk in France: coffee or tea from a Salut! mug

This is not exactly as it will look if you decide to buy the new Salut! mug. The text will be bolder and larger. But read on if you wish to register support for the site and impress friends with how you drink your tea or coffee ...

Salut!, as loyal readers know, came into being at the beginning of October 2006 after The Daily Telegraph decided 29 years of me was quite long enough and took all of five minutes, in a conference call from London to Paris, to fire me. The Telegraph has subsequently gone downhill, or so I'd like to imagine, while Salut! thrives in an impecunious sort of way.

The ugliness of Britain vs la belle France

The first phrase, with memories fresh from the fate of Ealing as shown in my photograph, was mine, in a piece here about my return to France from a week in greedy, riot-torn, chavvish Britain.

I've used the second phrase often enough and I suppose the next image, from down here in the Var, illustrates it ...

But let's see.

Stansted 0 Toulon 1: but thank heavens Depardieu wasn't on board

Believe it or not, I can remember when Stansted was relatively pleasant to fly from.

I know that must mean a long, long time ago. But it did once seem the sort of airport at which embarkation procedures were smooth and free of stress.

Now, of course, it is a monster. But I was glad to have Stansted, and Ryanair's services from it, as I retreated from the ugliness that is Britain and flew back to the Var.