A man with a keen sense of smell. Photograph AP
Being Francophile and internationalist at heart, the Observer blog does not want to be party to any indiscriminate France-bashing that might go on in the wake of Jacques Chirac's pointed jibe about British cuisine.
Since then, M. Chirac's famous comment about British agriculture and mad cow disease has been unearthed from the gaff archives and quoted around the place. Touche. Very drole, Mr C.
But lest we make the mistake of thinking the French preisdent's fabulous repertoire of bons mots is limited to national stereotypes on our side of the channel, the blog thought it was time to remind everyone of a speech made by the Mayor of Paris on 19 June 1991, a certain Jacques Chirac:
How can you expect the French labourer who works and, together with his wife, earns around 15,000 francs and who sees, crammed in across the landing of his council estate, a family consisting of a father, three or four wives and about twenty kids, who are earning 50,000 francs in benefits, obviously without working ... and if you take into account the noise and the smell, well! The French labourer across the landing will go mad. And it's not racist to say that.
And 11 years later he became President, beating the National Front candidate in the second round.
