AS a cat-lover I’ve always had a soft spot for the French.
Like felines, our Gallic friends are admirable for their steadfast refusal to do anything other than exactly what they want.
If they want to be rude to a foreign diner, they won’t let a trifling matter like the fact they’re employed as a waiter stand in their way.
If they want to blow up part of the Pacific, sink a Greenpeace boat or karate kick a gobby Cockney, they just go right ahead and do it and tell the rest of the world to live with it.
And, if a Frenchman wants to reduce his tax bill by cosying up to a notorious autocrat, then he jumps on the first flight to Moscow.
So it was no surprise to learn that France’s most famous actor, Gerard Depardieu, had taken Russian citizenship to get out of paying the new 75% income tax rate on high earners which has been introduced in his homeland.
Patriotism, solidarity, concern for human rights – these are all things that can get stuffed if a Frenchman decides that clinging on to his loot is the most important thing in his life. Come here, Vladimir, it’s time for a big hug.
If only British celebrities could show similar contempt for anything other than their own selfishness.
Paul Daniels, for instance, threatened to leave the UK if Labour won the 1997 General Election. Tragically, it was one disappearing act he failed to perform.
Artist Tracey Emin, a woman whose very voice has you questioning your will to live, also pledged to flee the socialist hellhole that was Britain after the 50p tax rate was introduced a few years ago.
Like Paul Daniels, she declined to go through with her threat.
What held them back from fleeing Blighty? Perhaps, in some dark corner of their minds both these British celebrities have some vague sense that they are not the only people in the world, that the views of other human beings actually matter.
If only they could be more like the French, we would have been shot of them both years ago.
