What a difference two Channel-hopping decades make. When 44-year-old Tony Blair won the 1997 election, we in France bought into Cool Britannia in a big way.

Our President, Jacques Chirac, then 65, had first held a Cabinet post under Charles de Gaulle. A self-inflicted defeat left him hobbled by a grey Socialist PM, Lionel Jospin, only five years his junior. Neither seemed to have any solution for France’s ills: 10 per cent structural unemployment, a bloated public sector, and a social climate averse to entrepreneurship.

Meanwhile, à Londres, your rock-star PM was inventing New Labour, seemingly re-creating the economics of Thatcherism, except with a beating heart; and, oh, yes, saving the Royal Family. This was post-modern James Bond stuff.

We (and, more to the point, bemused but enthusiastic Michelin Guide Inspectors) started taking the brand-new Eurostar to discover your restaurants. Our luxury fashion houses poached your best designers: Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Oswald Boateng. My, you were yar.