Your muzzer was an 'amster, and your fazzer smelled of elderberries

It's not often I meet virulently anti-Anglosaxon (to use their pet term) French people, but I did last night, at a party given by my American friend B. Most of the French I meet on social occasions are, whatever they think privately, scrupulously polite in a way that seems old-fashioned back in the UK, where modern English men are now too petrified of women to as much as hold a door open for them. By the way, I'm generalising about French men here as I have almost never been able to hold the attention of a French woman in company, unless we're both sitting down and the chairs are in a configuration that means she would have to climb over me in order to escape.

I have a theory the French save their rudeness up for public places and people they are never likely to see again, which might explain, for example, Parisians' legendary emnity with tourists.

This guy, however, was an exception. I had met him before, as I was leaving another party at B.'s house. We were talking in the hall, when he swayed out of the kitchen, and he calmly informed me that he hated all the f**king English. Er, bye then.

This occasion started promisingly enough, as he cooed over my daughter. 'Ah, what a beautiful child.' But then - 'She is English though, oh, what a shame. A real tragedy.' The humour was unconvincing. Later, having realised that we about to emigrate back to the UK, we fell into the category of people he was never likely to see again, and the gloves came off. The English food 'joke' rate went up to about one every five minutes, until it began to dominate the whole evening and I silently willed a giant tin of golden syrup to fall out of the sky (we were sitting outside) onto his head.

Having taught English to business drones like him, I think I know where the roots of this almost comical hatred lie. There comes a point in the lives of all young French movers and shakers when they realise that they can pass all the concours the state can throw at them, they can use their connections to shoehorn their way into any number of stages-to-die-for, if they can't speak English, zey are doomed! And, although they swallow their pride (image of a python swallowing a goat comes to mind), go to the lessons and learn ze bloody language and use it to get on and fulfill their destiny, they never quite come to terms with the indignity of it. So they seek solace in sad, outdated jibes about English food.

I realised, 24 hours too late, who that guy reminded me of, and what I should have said to him. For those of you scratching your heads over the title of this post, I suggest you rent the DVD of Monty Python's 'The Search for the Holy Grail' at your earliest convenience.