The positive news is that the most expensive drama series ever made for French television is going into production. It’s called Versailles and will be shown in 10 parts, concentrating on King Louis XIV, the monarch who built the vast palace. Each episode in the series takes 10 days to film and the total cost of the whole enterprise is €27 million.
Interestingly, the whole series is being filmed in English rather than French, as the producers have their eyes on the global market, where English is the lingua franca. I presume it will be dubbed back into French for France.
No sooner had news about the new Versailles series come out than the dreadful helicopter crash happened in a remote part of Argentina. During the filming of the “ Dropped” reality TV series for TF1 and some international markets, two helicopters collided and crashed, killing all 10 on board, the two Argentinian pilots and eight French nationals. Five of them were production people for the TV series, but three were French super sports stars, Florence Arthaud, the champion sailor, Camille Muffat, the Olympic swimming champion, a native of Nice, and Alexis Vastine, a champion boxer. The news of their deaths has caused much anguish in France and one tweet summed it all up perfectly, “une tristesse infinie” . Coming so soon after the Charlie Hebdo massacres in the Paris region in early January, this latest tragedy is particularly hard to take. Some people have complained that so many lives were lost so needlessly in the making of a mere reality TV series.
And talking about reality TV, what’ s going to happen to Jeremy Clarkson, now that he has been suspended from the BBC and production of the last couple of episodes of his show has been halted. Top Gear is actually the BBC’s best selling TV export, so if the series goes for a burton, it’ s going to be a big financial loss for the corporation. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Clarkson, objectionable as he often is, scrubs his ties with the BBC and signs up for someone else, like Sky.
Something else labelled objectionable by Manuel Valls, the French pm, is the Front National. He’ s predicting that on current trends, the Front National could well win the 2017 presidential election and Valls says that would be a disaster for France. But at least it has now emerged that nine out of 10 voters will now happily vote for a female presidential candidate. Marine Le Pen?
Since the disasters in the Paris area two months ago, the Plan Vigipirate counter- terrorism has continued. It’s at its highest levels in the Ile de France as well as the Alpes Maritime, while it’ s at a level of high vigilance in the rest of France. So far, it has cost taxpayers a total of €940 million, but one side effect has been a big decrease in armed robberies, car thefts, pickpocketing and burglary. All those crimes went down by 12.4 per cent in January compared with the same month of last year.
One interesting plan that’ s being worked on at the moment is for a car free day in Paris sometime in September. The precise details are still being worked out. Another upcoming plan is for selfie sticks to be banned in all Paris museums. Already, the Musée d’ Orsay bans the taking of all photographs and videos.
Another coming change is in public transport. For long, the state owned railways had the monopoly in long distance transport in France, but now, bus companies are being given the right to compete. A new bus service that’s about to start, between Paris and Toulouse, will charge €15 for a one way ticket. During its first week, that price will be reduced to exactly €1.
One bus driver caused himself an enormous amount of embarrassment the other day. He was taking a party of Belgian tourists to La Plagne, a resort in the French Alps. But he put the wrong town into his GPS system and ended up taking the tourists on an unexpected 1, 200 km detour to the town of the same name in south- west France, near the Spanish border. Passengers on the bus reported seeing such places as Carcassone, not quite what they had signed up for.
A much more devastating note comes from the current flu epidemic, where the level of fatalities in France is currently running at about 8, 500 more than is normal at this time of year. Altogether, well over two million people have caught the flu in France.
Another medical issue has come up thanks to campaigner Jill Nuss, who comes from near Strasbourg. She used to work as a sex worker, but is now married to a husband who is severely disabled with muscular dystrophy. Her husband, Michael, has written a book entitled Je veux faire l’ amour, while Jill is campaigning for disabled people in France to have the right to have paid sex, which seems very sensible. This right is already recognised in countries such as Belgium and Switzerland.
But talking about wealth, one thing you shouldn’t do is pay a cheque drawn on a French bank into an Irish bank account. It seems that banks in Ireland charge the extraordinary fee of €176 is you do just that. On the subject of wealth, the latest list of the 300 wealthiest people in Ireland shows that they are collectively worth about €85 billion. Their fortunes have soared in the past few years of recession while everyone else’s has sunk. Ireland is a deeply unequal society, with a vast difference between rich and poor. Just think what 10 per cent of the rich people’s wealth could do to help the poor, the dispossessed, the sick and the otherwise afflicted, but I haven’ t seen much sign of the wealthy doing their bit to help out those less well off.
Projections of technological advance are always fascinating. The American entertainer will.i.am has a keen interest in the subject and reckons that in 10 years’ time, every home will have a 3D printer. In 20 years’ time, if someone needs a new kidney, a 3D printer will produce one. But very often, people can get totally carried away by modern technology. I saw a prime example of this the other day when I met someone I know. This was on the street, and with one hand, he was busy trying to send an email, while with the other trying to control his dog, who was busy having a shit. It really summed up the ludicrousness of this technie obsession fantastically!
On the international front, I was astonished at the remarks made by the Greek defence minister that if the European Central Bank, the EU and the IMF, forced Greece into default, quitting the eurozone, Greece would respond by letting a million migrants loose on the rest of Europe. And he said that for good measure, their numbers could well include jihadists from Isis State. It was an incendiary remark, but what Nigel Farage of UKIP said what quite to the point. He said that Greece is being shafted by Berlin and Brussels.
Turning to slightly lighter topics, I see that Magaluf in Spain is making a big effort to clean up its act. Last summer, an 18 year old Irish women on holiday there hit the headlines when she performed sex acts on 24 men. It seems that she thought she would win a free holiday as a result. It was a free holiday alright, but a cocktail drink called “Holiday”! Then an Irish doctor working in Australia has caused a hullabaloo both there and in Ireland. Dr Gabrielle McMullin was talking about the rampant sexism among male surgeons in Australia. She said that women trainees should just get on with it and that it was better to do a bit of cock sucking than lose out by complaining. Her remarks were widely covered in Ireland, where they were taken with a pinch of the proverbial salt.
To end this week on the tragic story of the Irish red setter, who lived in Belgium, but who was competing at the Crufts dog show in London, where it was apparently poisoned. In one groan inducing headline, one London newspaper said that the police were working on a number of leads. That’s what they would say about the murder of an innocent dog.