Bill Buckley writes in the National Review online about the second bomb attack absorbed by the Brits last week. “The casus belli was what [Jacques] Chirac confided to his fellow world leaders about British cuisine. “You can’t trust people who cook as badly as [the British],” he told them. “After Finland, it’s the country with the worst food.” M. Chirac was quite obviously carried away with his mission to educate Germans and Russians, advising their leaders that the “only contribution” the British have made to agriculture has been “mad cow disease.”
That really did it. The Daily Mail began with a grand overview of Franco-British relations. “With the exception of two world wars in which, oddly, we found ourselves on the same side, we have loathed the French since 1066.” The Mail’s Simon Heffer went on to excoriate French agricultural policies, which have the effect of bringing undernourishment and even starvation to thousands.
The paper’s food editor is not to be trifled with. Clarissa Dickson Wright not only defended British cooking, she contrasted it to the dangers of eating in France, where, she said, she had even lost a family member. “Some years ago great uncle Bertram dined in one of those charming little provincial restaurants the French love to bang on about. He ate a classic French regional dish, tripe à la mode de Caen. Afterwards he died of acute food poisoning.” She left her readers wondering that there were so many Frenchmen still alive.”
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