Peter Rhodes: Your mother was a hamster

AS the week's horror unravelled in France, the many TV and radio interviews reminded us once again how many ordinary French folk speak excellent English, and how few Brits can manage to string the simplest sentence together in any foreign language.

EVEN those British politicians with a smattering of French spoke it with the most appalling English accent, which at least provided the French with some innocent amusement in these difficult times. A tip: if you are not prepared to embrace your inner Hercule Poirot and do the accent properly, it's best not to bother.

THE late, great Peter Ustinov who spoke eight languages said that before putting on a French accent he would "put on a French face," by rounding his lips and narrowing his cheeks. Then again, you could always study John Cleese's accent as the French knight taunting King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail with that famous Gallic insult: "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."

I MOANED recently about English trippers letting the side down by wagging fingers and haranguing officials after the Sharm el Sheikh air disaster. A reader in Jersey refers me to one TV interview featuring a stranded couple from the island and their two young children who were the epitome of patience and common sense. They understood the problems, accepted the delays and were untroubled about being parted from their luggage because "at the end of the day it's only possessions." My reader says: "Maybe living on a small island where travel is sometimes delayed due to fog or rough seas makes people more pragmatic." If so, what a pity that Jersey's politeness and pragmatism are so rarely found on the rather bigger island we call Britain.

IN the wake of the Paris massacres, an image appeared of a British female police officer draped in body armour and, as the Yanks say, loaded for bear with carbine, pistol, gas grenades and so on. It was an image designed to stiffen British resolve and it was all very gung-ho. However, as the Paris footage shows us, the most important accessory any cop, male or female, can have is the one you don't even know you possess until high-velocity bullets are cracking past your ears. It is the ability to stand your ground and fire back, even when your mates are running away. You can't buy it. You can't hang it from a gun belt. I'm not even sure you can teach it. I suspect courage is something you are either born with or without.

AND now, this week's award for the headline which is most out-of-kilter with the nation's mood and guaranteed to get right up the nose of Joe Public. It's a dead heat between the Guardian's bleeding-heart warning : "ISIS attack on Paris may be an 'act of war' but retaliation may not be lawful" and the Independent's pious little homily: "Think before you sing the bloody, violent French National anthem." Oh dear, oh dear.

WHY is Peep Show (C4), now in its final series, so popular? It's a bloke thing. It's a reminder of how our own lives might have turned out if we hadn't met the right person, landed the right job or been let off by the right sort of old-fashioned copper. The sad, frustrated existence of Mark and Jeremy (David Mitchell and Robert Webb) is the life we only just avoided. I take my hat off to the blogger who admits that when Peep Show is on, his telly turns into a mirror.