Humble Pie and ‘Dem Apples

Enjoy your humble pie, Monsieur Chirac

GILLIAN GLOVER
SCOTSMAN RESTAURANT CRITIC

What nation could resist responding to your comments about the link between international diplomacy and cuisine? Here in the concrete-and-bracken landscape of stereotype Scotland, where many of the luxuries which ease your elegant French life were first invented (a list of the top 40 can be delivered to your suite for a mere ┚¬200), we were shocked to read the Liberation report that Lord Robertson had once “forced” you to eat “an unappetising Scottish delicacy”.

It seemed even more puzzling that your personal distaste for haggis should prove so globally influential; but your assurance that “from there sprang all our [France’s] difficulties with NATO” has been noted.

Albeit with a giggle. We are most of us blessed with elderly relatives who believe the world’s troubles stem from indigestion. However, your commentas to Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin – that “the only thing the British have contributed to European agriculture is mad cow”, that Britain’s cuisine is “the second worst after Finland”, and that “one cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine” – have caused a bit of a stooshie.

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