5 things to know about French television;
1. Kojak is on every night. (Literally) “Qui T’aime Bebe?”
French Telly… (smirk!)
2. Dallas is on every morning but has different title music which is more martial than the familiar, wah-wah guitar drenched, disco classic, and, seems to feature the Village People or a Russian male voice choir singing “DAARRL-ARRRRRSE” with great gusto. They’ve given JR a REALLY evil French voice in the overdub too.
3. The French LOVE a chat show. They love a chat show that goes on for a marathon 6 hours every Saturday. Same host, millions of guests. The only ones I’ve recognised so far were Grace Jones (who speaks very good French) and Natalie Imbruglia (who doesn’t).
4. France has 6 free-to-air, normal, old fashioned, terrestrial channels. 5 of them constantly broadcast absolute dross. 1 of them (Arte) is excellent and shows either excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films, or, totally impenetrable, four hour documentaries about people who make excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films. I’m a big fan of excruciatingly long, black-and-white, strange camera angle, moody, no talking, no plot, films by the way.
5. There is a 7th channel that you can get through your normal telly but it seems to be scrambled to varying degrees. The daytime cookery programs are just a bit scrambled (eggs) so it looks like your aerial needs a bit of a nudge, evening movies are a bit more scrambled so it feels like your eyes have gone a bit wonky and your ears could do with a good dig around with a cotton bud, then after midnight it goes into full blurred-o-vision and a soundtrack of insect speech as they switch to France’s nightly dose of hardcore pornography.
I have an idea for a way to earn money on my return to the UK (21st September, Jet-Facile to Gatwick) which involves possibly not working for a company. It involves using a laptop computer. I’m working on it in my office here…
The view from my office “window” is this…
French for “That really pisses me off” seems to be “gener mar”. Probably best if you assume that that’s spelt wrong. This is pronounced “Johnny Marr” and the French think it’s REALLY funny when you follow them saying this with “And Morrissey too”, especially the younger ones who have no idea who, or indeed what, you are on about. Want another picture of the kitten? Oh, go on then…
