"What the French are best at is persuading other people that they are best at things," he said. "If you can do that, you don't actually have to be best at anything.""Give me an example.""Certainly Art. The French have convinced everyone that Paris is the art capital of the world Well, it was once. There was a time when the French either had the best painters or lured them here But this hasn't been true for ages.

Can you think of a single living French painter?""Only Bernard Buffet.""Who is terrible.""Yes.""You can't think of a good living French painter yet you see nothing wrong in Paris being thought of as the world's art centre..."Bill went on to point out that the French also liked to claim leadership of the world of philosophy by producing some fashionable and disposable school of thought every 20 years. When he expounded the theory to me, he was thinking of existentialism and all that hand-jive. Nowadays he would be thinking of structuralism and all that baloney.Bill didn't mention wine to me, because in those days even he thought French wine really was the best, but the French have had a harder job talking up their wines in recent years. (I once asked in a French wine shop if they had any Australian wines. "Do they make wines in Australia?" said the man, with a straight face.) But there again, a conjuring trick has been used by the French to maintain supremacy It is called "vintage years".

I once read a booklet about South African wines in which the writer explained that vintage years didn't mean a lot in South Africa because with consistently good weather in the Cape, every year was a good year. Vintage years were only necessary, he said, in countries like France where they often had bad years. It might have been Bill writing the booklet.There are some areas in which the French are genuinely good and don't have to show off Rugby And soccer too, now Bandes dessinees Film Jazz violinists and pianists Clothes sense. (I am told that punk fashion never worked in France because the French couldn't bear to be that unstylish, and French punks looked ever so chic.)There are also areas in which the French are genuinely bad I think TV may be one Modern pop music certainly is. Johnny Halliday was the first French attempt to produce a genuine rock musician. Not only was he pathetically unsuccessful outside France, he is still, 30 years later their only serious contender as "un rocker" - last week Paris Match had him on the cover prior to a huge series of rock concerts in the capital.