The English like nothing better than the idea that the French hate us. Bradley Wiggins, an Englishman, wins the Tour de France, and we are full of in-votre-face triumphalism. British journalists search the French media for sour grapes. How the frogs must be fuming! Beaten by a rosbif on their own turf!
Yet if the French were all so bitter about Wiggins, why did thousands of them line the Champs-Elysées on Sunday to cheer him home? Far from being grouchy, France seemed eager to hail Wiggins as the likeable and quirky champion that he is.
It’s true that some French papers complained about the boringness of this year’s Tour. But that was part of a longstanding gripe about the contest being too technical and unromantic, i.e. not French. It had little to do with Wiggins or Anglophobia. It was L’Equipe, after all, that pictured the race leader under the affectionate headline ‘Wiggo le Froggy’, in recognition of his fluency in their language.
English correspondents seemed baffled by the magnanimity of the French, and struggled to reciprocate. Ian Chadband, the Telegraph’s chief sports correspondent, managed to admit that ‘even the French had learnt to appreciate’ Bradley’s heroics. But he couldn’t stop himself from adding that ‘this really had become what the hosts had dreaded as La Promenade des Anglais’.
That’s the thing. It tickles our national vanity to pretend that the French hold a deep grudge against us — La Perfide Albion, etc — and it’s fun, too, in a tabloid sort of way. We saved them from the Krauts, twice, and they still can’t stand us. Silly surrender-monkeys.
The trouble is, it isn’t true. The French are not anti-English these days; if anything, they are more pro-English than ever.
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