In recent years it seems that the august body l'Académie française which regulates the French language by approving new words and grammar is there just to prevent the French populace from communicating with the rest of the world, which speaks English. L'Académie has been forced to move with the times on a regular basis and now allows the French to have "un sandwich après le shopping" and to "jouer au football sur le weekend" but only reluctantly and avec gritted dents. Franglais, the adoption of perfectly formed English words to replace unnecessarily multisyllabic French compound windbag nouns, is anathema to l'Académie and the language of Shakespeare, Keats, Dickens, Jeffrey Archer and Professor Stanley Unwin is to be resisted to the last homme, and femme.
You might say that's all well and good, let them take their country down a cultural cul de sac for all we care but a decision at the latest Académie meeting has infuriated young and old alike throughout self-styled 'la belle France'. The decree that English pop music will be banned with immediate effect caused riots along the Champs Elysées and the trashing of record shops in the heart of French cities last night as French "popular" music CDs and records were burned throughout the country.
Crowds were seen to be carrying placards and chanting their opposition to the forced imposition of French pop music. Cries of "Johnny Halliday est un vieux connard", "Charles Aznavour allez baiser" and "Vanessa Paradis, Joe le Taxi mange merde" rang out in the boulevards.
One enterprising shopkeeper was seen to be selling T-shirts bearing the slogan "Carla Bruni chanteuse? Va te foutre."
The Spoof's Paris correspondent managed to speak to one rioter who had broken off from his evening of drinking boules and smoking Pernod to join the angry throng.
"Merde alors, bloody Académie. They expect us to put up with zis shit French musique? I mean, it's all fucking accordions and warbling and avez vous jamais entendu French rap? Sacre bleu, give us something to which we can relate, something meaningful, peut-etre Wham's 'Wake me up before you gogo' or Black Lace's 'Agadoo'."
The Spoof asked the most famous living Frenchman, Le Professeur Arsene Wenger, for his opinion.
"It is surprising that my country which has given the world countless writer-philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Le Marquis de Sade, cannot produce one decent popular song apart from Surge Goesforit and Jane Firkin's 'Je t'aime moi non plus' but she's English anyway. It's probably best if we stick to making cheese, producing wine and having it off with each other's wives and girlfriends."
