CHOPS AWAY, OLD GIRL

You know how you are sometimes taken by surprise by the irresistible magnetism of some people? The odious but strangely attractive Malcolm Tucker of "The Thick of It" is one. That Portuguese bloke who drives the bike on Rogue Traders is another. You can't put it down to smell when they're on the telly, Bananas. And then I started looking at their grooming. Every one of them had sideburns that came to mid-ear.

Ooh I love it when you're angry

Let me ride pillion

Don't know why, but he loves to see me cry

Oh, brother where art thou?

Not tonight ...

I recall a 2006 interview with Mr Zidane senior, father of the much-loved Zizou, who was talking proudly of his son who had just lost France the World Cup with such panache. He was recounting the ways in which Zizou was a chip off the old block. One of them was "he wears his sideburns exactly the same length as mine, at mid-ear, which denotes virility in our culture." The tribesmen of the Atlas mountains (of whom Zizou is a favourite son) have understood for millennia that the exact measurement of the sideburn sends out a subliminal signal to women.





Apart from Napoleon, Corsica is famous for the violent cult of 'vendetta' of which they are so proud they engrave the word on the blades of lethal looking knives sold as souvenirs, as well as comestible exports such as sheep's milk cheese, fig jam, and, er, chestnut beer. They are also keen on standing around singing a cappella with one finger in their ear. The more musically educated of you such as Gadjo and our gamelan-playing traveller friend in Reading will immediately recognize this as polyphonic singing, the rest of you just be quiet and colour in the pictures.

ABLE WAS I

Getting it up for Josephine

I was in Corsica for five days last week. Corsica's main claim to fame is as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, French national hero, as commemorated by Napoleon Bonaparte International Airport, the Hotel Napoleon where I stayed, cours Bonaparte the main drag of the capital .... you get the picture. He is their most famous son, and like Ronaldo, Jordan and Sting, is known by just his first name. Despite the fact that he was a dictator, he is revered by all the French as the man who saved France from the Terror of the Revolution, codified the law, rewrote the military handbooks, gave France an empire and kept the English at bay. (Until Waterloo, anyway)

Monument to Boney in Bastia main square

Frenchwomen secretly have the hots for Napoleon. I knew one elderly lady in Paris who confessed she had had an erotic dream about Napoleon that was so intense she had never forgotten it. She kept a portrait of him on her wall, and blushed slightly every time she looked at it. He obviously wasn't nicknamed Boney for nothing. He was married twice, to the ravishing Josephine who was not, contrary to popular legend, remotely black. She was born in the French West Indies, the child of wealthy white settlers. She was unable to give him an heir so he dumped her for Marie-Louise of Austria. He had many lovers, the most famous of which was perhaps Countess Maria Walewska, the famed Polish beauty, with whom he had a son. The Empress Eugénie is often mistakenly mentioned in connection with Bonaparte, she was in fact the wife of Napoleon III, his nephew, the last monarch and first President of France, and in my humble opinion infinitely more interesting than his megalomaniac uncle.

Pauline was Napoleon's sister, and at 22 was already a wealthy widow. Her Paris home, the Hotel de Charost, is now the British Ambassador's residence, and some bits of her furniture are still there. I have bounced on Pauline Bonaparte's bed. Pauline, like her brother, had a healthy sexual appetite. It is said that every man who wished to court the lady had to bring her a clock. There are 100 clocks in the house, and a little man has to come in once a month to wind them all.

Napoleon wasn't tiny, this is a myth created by the English who wished to diminish him. He was in fact about 5'7" which is pretty standard for a Frenchman. However, many Frenchmen of restricted growth model themselves on Napoleon.

My hotel in Bastia had a view of the island of Elba, where Napoleon was first exiled.

Elba, at dawn, with the night ferry arriving from Nice.

By a combination of boot power and marrying his family members into European royalty, Napoleon controlled many neighbouring countries and made a fair crack at uniting Europe, whilst showing the old money like the Habsburgs and the Bourbons who was boss. Not surprising that the French idolize him, whilst admitting he was a bastard. They continue this tradition in their football.

Talking of football, let us contemplate a haiku in honour of the first President of Europe, who is an Anderlecht supporter:

Herman Van Rompuy -

His name is only funny

if you are British

AUF WIEDERSEHEN, PET

By the time you read this, thanks to the miracle of delayed publication, I will be tripping along the Champs-Elysées on one of my regular jaunts to gay Paree. So why have I posted up a picture of the Brandenburg Gate? Read on, meine kinder.

Shock, horror. Bert announced this week he is hanging up his cymbals and going back to the Vaterland! He is going to be the Rhineland's answer to Gareth Malone, I believe, taking up a new position as Kapellmeister of the Berlin Lederhosen Boys' choir. No, don't even go there. Bert has been part of my life since I arrived in Brussels four years ago, and has a great influence on my speech patterns had.

Picturing G.Malone in lederhosen .... ooh

I was rather abacktaken, as this coming I did not see. I am left with the triangle in the hand holding. I am not sure what holds the future. McChé will soon from his residential position in a hospitalresearchprojekt back coming be, but he can not really the Bertgap in the KNOB* be filling. His blowing is very poor. And he hasn't got a uniform.

On this Armistice weekend, I dug out this old peacenik favourite. It has particular resonance in view of Bert's departure. This is what I will be singing if there is not a large bunch of roses delivered very soon.

* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

Dedicated to Tony Blair and George W. Bush.