When I was at school we had this French textbook. ‘La Famille Marsaud’ featured prominently in it. They were, according to my French teacher Mrs Clay (of whom I will write about more in due course) a typical French family who lived in a beautiful suburban chateau with a walled garden. Monsieur Marsaud worked in a bank (or some other important managerial post), Mme Marsaud was an extraordinarily competent and rather elegant housewife with a tiny waist who endlessly cooked delights for the long family dinners, and the two children, one boy, one girl (whose names I have successfully blocked from my memory) were both beautifully turned out, of a sunny disposition and exceptionally well behaved. I seem to remember them crying ‘Maman, maman!’ a lot while squealing around the garden with Bruno (une belle chien). I think ‘un jolie ballon rouge’ was involved in these proceedings.

Typical French family eh? Clearly the whole point of the book was to humiliate us as uncouth, woad-daubed barbarians by presenting this utopian ideal of the family unit in cartoon form for British children to learn that elsewhere in the world things were better. Even the bloody French weather was always: ‘En France il fait du soleil beaucoup, mais en Engleterre il pleut et il fait mauvais’. So what if this particular observation was true? (I admit, it was today, I got soaked again.) There was no need to rub it in.

Whoever wrote that book should have been shot for engendering anti-European feelings. I’m sure key members of the UK Independence Party all had to read it at school too.

I failed my French O-level.