Salut!

Sunderland le film, with title music from Saint Etienne?

colin randall — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:01:14 +0100

Available at Salut!'s Amazon record shelf

Maryvonne and Peter were, as ever, wonderful hosts in Argenteuil, Paris was - as often in winter - desperately cold and, there in the 9th arrondissement a sharp walk from Saint Lazare station, Sunderland was a pleasure to behold.

The play discerning folk first read about at the Salut! group of websites has been running since September at the Petit Théâtre de Paris. It has proved such a success, charming most who see it, that the run has been extended to June.

And now stand by for Sunderland the film. With one small refinement: it will be set in France. Saint-Etienne to be precise, if the producer's current thinking prevails.

The writer, Clément Koch, thought when he sold the options on his script that it would be relocated to northern France or even Belgium. That would have allowed the filmmakers to exploit the success of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (Welcome the the Sticks), France's big box office hit after Titanic, telling the story of a post office manager banished in disgrace to a bleak, rainswept town up north where people speak strangely.

Here is how I reported today* on an unlikely Parisian stage success now destined for the big screen (there's also an account at Salut! Sunderland, in which I offer my thoughts on the play). As for the soundtrack, my headline is merely a suggestion ...

Imagine the fictional American backwater of Hicksville as not only dull, but grim. Someone writes a play portraying everyday life there, injects a few good gags and suddenly has a huge Broadway hit on his hands, whetting the appetite of a posse of Hollywood directors.

Bienvenue to Hicksville, Paris style. In an improbable success story, Sunderland - the play, not the north-eastern English city that has long been the butt of comedians' jokes - has taken theatreland by storm in the city of romance.

A dark comedy - in which a dysfunctional family struggles with life in a former mining and shipbuilding city dominated by unemployment, rotten weather, football and alcohol - the production has won rave reviews from critics and theatregoers alike.

The material seems unpromising: a woman turns to surrogate motherhood to raise money to look after her autistic teenage sister after their mother commits suicide.

But after selling out night after night since opening last September at the Petit Théâtre de Paris, the play has had its run extended until June instead of closing, as originally planned, at the end of December. After serious interest from at least two French filmmakers, a producer linked to Pathé has now bought an option to turn the production into a movie.

As one who has lived in France for most of the past eight years, but grew up in one of the surrounding County Durham towns and villages that provide much of Sunderland football club's support, I consider myself an authority on how the city is seen on both sides of the English Channel.

In the UK, mention of the place routinely produces amusement or derision. In France, blank looks would be more commonplace, though during bleak times for the football team, one Monsieur Blanc, a shopkeeper in the Mediterranean resort where I live, would throw open his arms, shout out "Sunderland!" and burst into laughter whenever we met.

A British columnist reviewing a soap opera storyline in which a character covered up an affair by claiming to be staying in Sunderland to buy a greyhound, wrote recently: "Anybody willingly wanting to spend the night in Sunderland would raise my doubts."

"None of the cast had any idea where it was before they came together for the play," says Clément Koch, a French writer and actor who spent a year studying at Durham University and working at the Nissan car factory on Sunderland's outskirts.

A line spoken by one of the play's characters shows what the actors were missing: "It rains so much that it feels like you're living in a washing machine."

Warts and all, the play has made a big impact on the Parisian cultural landscape. It may rain a lot in Sunderland; the wettest day of my life was spent there, trudging through rainswept streets on the eve of Sheikh Mansour's takeover of Manchester City, who had just beaten my team 3-0. But on a bitingly cold night that is a speciality of Parisian winters, another large audience warmed last week to what one amateur online reviewer called Sunderland's mixture of "emotion, belly laughs and love".

"It captured the ambience of working class life in the area very well and also the tribal divide between the two cities, Sunderland and Newcastle," said Maryvonne, a French friend who once worked as an au pair in north-eastern England. "It was perhaps more about a social milieu than any particular place, but I laughed a lot, even though it was a sad story."

Koch, 41, married with two children, recalls with some affection the Sunderland he came to known as a young man. He cheerfully admits that the play presents a caricature of life in northern England, though he remembers his eyes "popping out" on first encounter with the boisterous nightlife and distinctly non-chic gaudiness of its youth.

He says it would be his "greatest prize" to see the play translated into English and presented in Sunderland and the London West End.

But anyone intrigued by how a filmmaker would depict Sunderland, the city, on the big screen is likely to be disappointed.

Richard Pezet, the producer who has taken an option on the script, says he plans to move the story's setting from northern England to France and currently favours the town of St Etienne, in the Massif Central.

"There are a lot of similarities between the two locations," he says, citing intense football rivalry with neighbouring Lyon and modern struggles with industrial decline and unemployment. "But it is all at a very early stage."

* From The National, Abu Dhabi

Alastair Campbell, Leveson and the double standards of media scrutiny

colin randall — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:35:50 +0100

It is unfashionable to say this, but I have always quite liked Alastair Campbell.

He was a hungry young local paper hack when I first knew him, and gratefully accepted the odd payment from The Daily Telegraph for his stories from Cornwall which I was able to use or develop.

He later prospered in Fleet Street, at the tabloid end, overcame a drink problem and played his prominent part in the New Labour project, rising to be Tony Blair's press secretary and attracting a fair number of brickbats along the way (the process leading to British commitment to the war in Iraq prompting the most serious of them).

I have never worked directly for a tabloid, rarely wish to abandon alcohol and, broadly speaking, always preferred Old Labour to the newer variety. So we do have differences.

No matter. Since he left local newspapers, we have spoken on the phone and met on a couple of occasions (in Skopje and Paris as it happens). He also kindly responded when his beloved Burnley were in the Premier League to questions ahead of a game against my own beloveds. Our relations have been cordial and professional; it would be misleading to put them higher.

Our differences leave plenty about Campbell - his books can be browsed at this Salut! Amazon link - for me to respect and I am not remotely unhappy to hear he has accepted a payout from News International for instances of phone hacking aimed at him.

The practice, of which I knew nothing before the celebrated case of the News of the World royal correspondent who went to jail, veered from deplorable to obscene, depending on the target. I even find it a huge struggle to approve of its use by journalists to expose wrongdoing, as one Guardian man did and as is glorified in the excellent new film of the Stieg Larsson book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

But what worries me a little is the sanctimonious posturing of so many, especially on radio and television, when looking at the current Leveson inquiry into press conduct.

Campbell was talking about his legal victory over Murdoch on BBC 5 Live today and mentioned what a great fan he was of the station. Earlier in the week, television reports of the Mail editor Paul Dacre's evidence to Leveson had assumed the obligatory shocked, detached tones when mentioning references to his newspaper's use of private detectives.

But hang on. Did the BBC not admit to Leveson that it, too, had been using private detectives? And on a pretty industrial scale? Why did the BBC's own report of Dacre not refresh viewers' memories of this? Clearly, there is sometimes a justification for news organisations to turn to such people; is only the BBC entitled to decide when this is the case?

And, yet again, how is it that television is always able to show footage to accompany derogatory reports about newspaper reporters and photographers standing on the doorsteps of the homes, gyms or places of employment of people in the news? Because TV was there too! And that includes colleagues of the Radio 5 folk to whom Campbell was cosying up. Someone directing TV news had decided the event as worth covering and dispatched the staff to do so, just as radio and newspaper executives had done.

Gathering the news is not always a pretty sight. It is often, even when not edifying to see in action, vital to our freedoms and values. Agreed, some of the news that is gathered is, frankly, not worth gathering at all if claims are to be made for the importance of the press in a democratic society.

But I have to say that no trade or profession could stand up to the intensity (and lack of cross-examination) of the Leveson inquiry without betraying some dodgy practices and procedures. Come in lawyers and accountants, policemen and politicians, builders and plumbers, sportsmen and entertainers, your time is up. In fact come in everyone who works for a living, and indeed those who have a living without working for it. Let us have a warts-and-all investigation of how you go about earning your livelihood.

My contention is that there are many more people in journalism, from local rags to the big nationals and TV networks, doing a difficult job with integrity and professionalism than there are rogues.

But for those inclined always to look kindly on the oh-so-decent broadcast journalists and regard those of us in print as scum, I offer this anecdote:

Some years ago, several young people had been killed when their overcrowded car crashed in the Home Counties. I was sent to the scene by the Telegraph.

It was a sad but hardly unheard-of sort of occurrence. It never seemed likely to me to make more than a basic 4/500-word report. A couple of other print journalists and a photographer were also there, along with a TV crew. There was little to do.

As I was about to leave, I noticed two young women approaching with flowers. I waited until they had set them down by the side of the road before quietly asking whether either wished to make a tribute to the loved one/s they were commemorating. One of the women identified herself as the sister of one of the dead. She made a short, dignified and uplifting comment about her brother. I apologised for having bothered them, and moved away; it had been a public gesture on their part and I considered my approach, though painful to me and potentially offensive to them, respectful, restrained and justifiable.

But spotting this, the TV reporter hurried over and repeatedly begged the victim's sister to say again what she had said to me, but to camera. This she emphatically did not wish to do. I intervened on her behalf, promising the TV man I would pass to him all she had said to me, but this was not good enough. He went on haranguing her, despite her distress and my own protests (supported by a local newspaper photographer), about his persistence. This was not a tenacious reporter pursuing a powerful, evasive individual; it was the cruel harassment of a grieving relative.

It doesn't make print good, TV bad. It does remind me of something Bill (Lord) Deedes's son, Jeremy, then managing editor of the Telegraph and a man who had also worked for tabloids, once said to me: "We are all essentially muddying our feet in the same water."

Yes, to an extent, we are. But there should always be ways of doing so without splashing dirty droplets over everyone else.

None of this justifies phone hacking, for which appropriate punishments exist and should be applied to those directing such methods rather more than to those who meekly obeyed their commands.

But Lord Leveson would do well to adopt a sense of proportion when deciding what to do about two sorts of practices: those that are indefensible and need to be stamped out, by law or self-regulation or a mixture of the two, and those that must be accepted as the occasionally heavy or ugly price of ensuring vital freedoms, and checks and balances, in a regimented society where, otherwise, the interests of ordinary people would be crushed.

Frenchwomen: super slim, super lovers, super cooks, super mums? Non, non, non

colin randall — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:32:37 +0100

The press has been awash with stories and those outpourings of why-oh-why female columnists' angst about French Children Don’t Throw Food, a book written by Pamela Druckerman, an American with three kids, an English husband and a place called home in Paris.

It is a little like that Mireille Guiliano book Frenchwomen Don't Get Fat which suddenly changed for its French translation to Ces françaises qui ne grossissent pas, coincidentally or not after I had pointed out that the original was, strictly speaking, untrue (can you honestly say you've never been behind an enormous female bottom in Carrefour or Auchan?). The change was commercially unimportant; the book had already run up seven-figure sales and the delightful Mme Guilano had treated me to a splendid dinner at the Crillon.

Druckerman has a point or two. French kids do still get smacked an awful lot more than English children; it was surely the other way round once upon a time. But I cannot be alone in having seen signs banning French school trips from English shops or, indeed, les gosses flinging food around.

But the main point is that all this adulation of French womanhood is making les françaises feel a little uncomfortable.

On their behalf (rather than hers: the photo vouches for her trim figure and I am an unqualified champion of her cooking and maternal skills, the rest being none of your business), Mme Salut has addressed the British nation.

Today's Daily Mail carried the following letter from someone who might have written from the Var but on this occasion did so from west London:

Following Kathryn Knight's article on French mothers in Femail last Thursday, I must say on behalf of French women that this type of article is setting impossibly high standards for us.
I have spent most of my adult life in Britain, since arriving as an au pair in Darlington when I was 20,and am not sure how I can ever live up to the mantra that I must be slim, gorgeous and chic as well as being a fabulous cook, a great lover and, now, a better mother than British women.

Please, please give us a break. We may avoid snacking to improve our chances of staying slim, and most of us probably reject the idea that growing older means you have to dress dowdily, but we are just normal human beings like the rest of the female poplation, not performing seals!

... can be bought at Salut!'s Amazon link

So that means Mme Salut has had rather more published in the Mail than her old man in the past 10 months, my devoted readers (!) these days being forced to the Salut! empire, The National and the TES.

But leaving aside the hack nature of the genre of books into which Pamela Druckerman's work falls, isn't there just now a much weightier issue concerning French womanhood, namely the growing threat that May could theoretically see Marine le Pen enter the Elysée as president on behalf of the despicable, far-right Front National? No, I know it is not supposed to happen and probably won't. A scary thought all the same ...

Richard O'Dwyer and sucking up to a justice system - sorry, America - that sucks

colin randall — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:55:21 +0100

Suitably lopsided. Image: Ben Sutherland

The verb usage in the headline is hardly elegant but neatly fits the case of Richard O'Dwyer, the Sheffield student who has become the latest Briton to face extradition to the US in highly questionable circumstances.

All judicial systems have flaws.

France rightly refuses to send people to the US for trials in which they would be virtually certain to be treated much more harshly than at home.

But there are plenty of instances of the French getting things grotesquely wrong, too: from false but ruinous child abuse accusations, leaving the innocent and unconvicted to fester in jail for months on end, to the absurd four-year sentence passed on a Scottish woman, Margaret MacDonald, for running an upmarket prostitution racket. It sounded very much like a victimless crime.

And these cases can be contrasted with laughably lenient handling of people who kill others, often when drunk and/or reckless, on the roads of France, and the indulgence shown towards corrupt public figures.

Come back across the Channel and you find much cause for both praise and disapproval. The British courts have got cases dreadfully wrong, as in some of the IRA show trials, but at least they have then made amends, albeit far too long after the event.

Then you consider how British lawyers and judges use or enforce our disgraceful, oppressive defamation laws to suppress freedom of expression, exploiting or presiding over a rotten system that allows foreign opportunists to breeze in and collect huge windfalls denied to them in their own jurisdictions.

Nick Cohen has written convincingly on the subject in a new book, You Can't Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom*, a long extract from which appeared in The Observer yesterday.

Even more despicable than the examples of libel tourism that Cohen describes, or one or two others I could add, is the acquiescence of our courts in attempts by the US authorities to seize British citizens for crimes allegedly committed on UK soil but also (or perhaps even only) constituting offences in America.

O'Dwyer's threatened extradition is such a case. He is being pursued for running a website, TVshack, which listed other sites where people could gain free access to films and television shows. If reporting of the extradition proceedings is accurate, what he did was not even against the law of the UK.

People with sharp legal brains read Salut!. Maybe one of them can explain a process that allows such gross breaches of natural justice to occur.

District Judge Quentin Purdy, sitting at Westminster magistrates' court, made this astonishing ruling when allowing O'Dwyer's extradition to go ahead: "There are said to be direct consequences of criminal activity by Richard O'Dwyer in the USA albeit by him never leaving the north of England. Such a state of affairs does not demand a trial here if the competent UK authorities decline to act and does, in my judgment, permit one in the USA."

It may be that O'Dwyer, like the hacker Gary McKinnon, also facing extradition to the US thanks to the kowtowing of British courts, is no saint.

McKinnon hacked into Nasa and Pentagon computers from his London home. He admits causing breaching the systems (his explanation, according to reports, is that he wanted to find out whether "little green men": exist), but not responsibility for damage said to have been caused.

In turn, O'Dwyer reportedly earned a great deal of money from his site. On the face of it, then, neither has behaved in a manner that would make reasonable men and women admire him. Just as computer hackers are pests, O'Dwyer does not appear to have been driven by altruistic concern that people were being deprived of filmed entertainment.

But if they have committed criminal offences at all, they should be put on trial in the country where they did so, namely Britain, and punished - if convicted - under our laws. What is entirely sure is that in such an eventuality, O'Dwyer would not run the least risk of being jailed for 10 years or McKinnon for 60.

I do not suggest that these maximum sentences would be applied in either case and nor would I argue that a Briton who commits an offence in another jurisdiction should avoid being prosecuted there, however strongly I may deplore the outcome.

But I do submit with all the force at my disposal that no British subject should ever be sent for trial in another country, especially one that is likely to impose disproportionate penalties, for acts allegedly committed in his or her own land but somehow deemed criminally actionable elsewhere. Ignorance of the law is famously no defence; do we now need to be fully conversant with the laws of foreigners whether or not we have any wish to visit their countries?

If the British authorities have examined the cases of these young men and found no justification for bringing charges, that should be an end to the matter.

As for the punishment hawks of the US, they should be told to content themselves with the knowledge that such individuals will - in common with Roman Polanski, safely back in France after his narrow escape from being carted off to a Californian jail from Switzerland and whose case I have previously shown to touch on arguments about both libel tourism and extradition - forever be denied the chance of visiting Walt Disney World, Hollywood or Manhattan without fear of arrest.

And at the risk of being considered deeply unfashionable, I heartily applaud the Daily Mail for its vociferous campaigning on the troubling matters raised by the two cases I have highlighted.

* You can buy Nick Cohen's book, which is published by 4th Estate, for about £8 by visiting Salut!'s Amazon link.

Bali: from floral splendour to honest to goodness rubbish

colin randall — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:56:20 +0100

Bali and Mexico are behind me. France beckons once more. A trip to Paris looms - read about it here - and then it will be back south to the Var. With the presidential elections coming up, things are likely to be busy and Salut! will regain its predominantly French flavour.

After the visit to Bali (Mexico so soon afterwards wrongly suggests unexpected riches have come my way), I posted some pictures of the splendid floral life to be found on the island. Even my photographic limitations failed to rid them of their exceptional beauty.

What you see above may not seem part of the Balinese idyll, but is no less part of the sightseeing beat, at any rate if you are on a Kuoni tour.

This is how I reported it for The National, Abu Dhabi in today's business pages:

As sightseeing trips go, a visit to Temesi, 26km north-east of Denpasar, the provincial capital of the holiday island of Bali, is undoubtedly an eye-opener. But it is one that assails the sense of smell, too.

When the tourist buses halt just outside the village, passengers who have neglected to check the day's itinerary in advance, and absent-mindedly expect to disembark at a temple or craft workshop, are surprised to find themselves at the entrance to a large rubbish dump.

After one glance and intake of breath, some squeamish tourists decline to proceed on the guided tour. Those not deterred by the spectacle and odours soon learn that in this little-known corner of Indonesia, an old saying from northern England holds true: where there's rubbish, there's money - or, in the correct Yorkshire vernacular, where's there's muck, there's brass.

The Temesi Recycling Facility may seem an odd attraction for holidaymakers and also an unlikely proposition as a going concern, but the relentless activity that visitors notice amid the debris of everyday life ensures the project pays its way.

The teams of workers seem philosophical about their surroundings to the extent that many take their meal breaks without leaving the piles of waste. Their job is to separate the biodegradable and recyclable material from that which cannot be salvaged.

Each year, they process about 20,000 tonnes of rubbish. The painstaking sifting of the detritus ensures 90 per cent is recycled, the rest going to landfill.

Taking all the waste generated by residents and holidaymakers in the regency of Gianyar, Bali's most populated district after Badung, the centre produces almost 5,000 tonnes of high-quality compost each year. It estimates its activities will, over 10 years, prevent more than 135,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases from being pumped into the atmosphere that would otherwise result from burning the waste.

The project is seen as so important, potentially an example that could be followed elsewhere in Indonesia and in other countries, that it receives significant international financial and academic support. Operational since 2004, the plant has grown into a "viable full-size model for replications".

Among the external supporters is the Swiss Kuoni travel company, which pours money into the Temesi project as part of its "sustainable tourism" programme, the resources coming from the proceeds of the group's carbon credits earnings.

Matthias Leisinger, the head of corporate responsibility for Kuoni, said the company's commitment began modestly in 2004 at about €7,000 a year to an average of €100,000 now.

He said independent auditing was conducted into the operation of the centre, including staff conditions, to ensure appropriate standards were met. Temesi sells its compost to golf-course operators, hotels and other businesses serving Bali's tourism industry.

Mr Leisinger said Kuoni's involvement reflected its sense of environmental responsibility but added that efficient waste management also made good sense for the tourism interest of the island.

"It really is a win-win situation," he said. "We are looking for opportunities for similar projects. The Indonesian government is very interested in the work being done at Temesi, and we are also considering possible programmes in other Kuoni destinations."

The project was initiated by the rotary club of Ubud, a historic Balinese town that now has an important tourism trade.

A local environmental non-governmental organisation, Yayasan Gelombang Udara Segar (Wave of Fresh Air), was the start-up partner, and the project will eventually pass to the control of Gianyar municipality.

The centre's management points to an escalating problem of waste polluting what it describes as Bali's "formerly pristine environment".

"It demands a comprehensive waste solution," the project's website says. "A public campaign without a good comprehensive collection system frustrates and demotivates the public as they cannot comply, and a collection system without a good, environmentally friendly waste treatment doesn't help nature."

The initial objective it says, was to research and develop an environmentally friendly, safe and economical solution to the problem of waste management.

In its modest way, the centre's work is reminiscent of Abu Dhabi's Masdar City project, where the declared aims in creating a "vibrant global clean-tech" community include minimising landfill and maximising "the resource potential of waste materials by reuse, recycling, composting and recovery of energy".

Travellers familiar with organised tours know that at the end of every guided visit to craft sites, there is a shop. And the Temesi Recycling Facility is no exception.

After being led briskly around the plant, holidaymakers find themselves in the visitors centre where, amid models and charts explaining the project and broader environmental issues, stands a counter selling tiny bags of what the centre hails as the "best compost in Indonesia".

Paris and Sunderland: bonne année and play on

colin randall — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 13:39:25 +0100

Image: V Tonelli

Salut! wishes a happy new year to all readers and updates cultural news from Paris ...

Over at my other place, or one of them, I broke news back in October about one of the strangest hits of the Parisian stage.

I wrote at Salut! Sunderland about the play that was taking the City of Romance and Light by storm.

That may have been a slight exaggeration. But I have heard nothing but good from critics and theatre-goers alike about Sunderland the play.

And soon I will be able to judge for myself. The tickets have been organised, travel is booked and at the end of the month four of us will take our places at the Petit Théâtre de Paris to see a French take on the old theme of It's Grim Oop North. This is how I summed it up at Salut! Sunderland in a piece that had Fleet Street, the BBC and other scurrying to catch up:

It sounds as if it might be something Molière would have come up with if given some old Likely Lads scripts and asked to portray life in a northern English town dominated by rain, factory closures, bird flu (bit out of date there, mind) … and the shortcomings of the football team.

A comedy à l’anglaise where emotion and laughter constantly intermingle, according to the blurb.

The play was written by a Frenchman, Clément Koch, who formed some affection for Sunderland and the North East generally while studying at Durham University.

Clément turns out to play guitar and prefers ice hockey and tennis to football; in exchanges we have had, he hints at having once followed the fortunes of Sunderland AFC but says he has been put off football quite comprehensively by such events as the French national team's disgraceful mutiny during the World Cup in South Africa.

Here are a couple of comments from theatre-goers that I have come across:

* “A lovely piece of theatre between emotion, belly laughs and love, carried off by a uniformly strong cast. No overacting and we are drawn into the story as in a film.”

* “Loved it, a beautiful production that really makes you believe you’re in the north of England. Very well written, lots of emotion and tenderness and sometimes some laughter. Excellent actors. We had a great time.”

Someone from L’Express confused football and rugby, suggesting that life in Sunderland revolved round that game played with an egg-shaped ball.

But she (I think I am right in recalling the critic as female) loved Koch's ability to produce brilliant comedy from characters including a woman bringing up her autistic younger sister after the child’s mother hangs herself, a lovestruck, spurned male friend and a flatmate who earns a living spouting telephone porn.

As the icing on the cake, there two also gays in search of the uterus, which sounds more Durham Uni than Stadium of Light. “With all that, and the lovely presence of Elodie Navarre," trilled L'Express, "the director Stéphane Hillel sweep us off our feet. Bravo!”

I shall report on my own impressions in due course ...

Brontë in Paris; pity poor Haworth

colin randall — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:33:19 +0100

My news from Paris is that on Jan 30 this cultural jewel, a tiny manuscript written by a youthful Charlotte Brontë in 1830, will go on public display for the first time.

That is an awful long time for the public to have had to wait. So it is good to be able to add that there is a geographical bonus: there are far worse places to find yourself on a winter's day than the vicinity of 222 Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Le Musée des lettres et manuscrits - someone please explain to me why Le not La, but do NOT get me on to the subject of the accent in Brontë - was successful in an auction at Sotheby's in London on Dec 14 in securing the "little book", which measures just 35 x 61mm but nevertheless contains 20 pages with more than 4,000 words of minuscule script.

For Charlotte, then just 14, it was part of a second series of The Young Men’s Magazine, her writing inspired by a set of toy soldiers bought for Charlotte's brother Branwell by their father.

Happiness for the musuem on the Left Bank brought dismay to Haworth, the West Yorkshire village where the Brontë family lived in the house that is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Also a fine place to be.

It was the fervent hope of the self-explanatory Brontë Society that it could return the manuscript to where it began, the writer’s home.

"Previously untraced and unpublished", the museum reports, was expected to fetch between £200,000 and £300,000 but in the end sold for £580,000. The Brontë Society was armed with a grant of £613,140 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, £20,000 from the John Murray Archive, £10,000 from the Friends of National Libraries and many donations to a public appeal. That looks as if it might have been enough to go beyond the eventual selling price, but for two snags. One they know about, the other they may be about to learn:

* Commission takes the hammer price a lot higher (the total in this case reaching £690,850

* Le Musée des lettres et manuscrits had a lot more up their sleeves in any case. The president told me he had the means to go to €1 million if necessary

But also unknown to Haworth, when I spoke to the collections manager Ann Dinsdale, was the French museums complete willingness to share its new treasure. It will go in display in a Brussels offshoot - significantly, the Belgium capital was the setting for two of Charlotte's four novels.

Ann and her colleagues may wish to read on. This is how I reported the story for The National, Abu Dhabi:

A tiny literary treasure from the childhood fantasy world created by the Brontë sisters will soon go on display in a French museum, after being bought for a record price at auction in London.

Charlotte Brontë, who later wrote one of the best-known novels in the English language, Jane Eyre, used miniature pages and small handwriting to compose a work she called The Young Men's Magazine, Number 2 when she was 14.

The manuscript is set in "Glass Town", a fictional product of the four Brontë siblings' imaginations, using as its characters a box of toy soldiers their father had bought for Charlotte's brother, Branwell.

The biggest part of the contents is devoted to "A Letter from Lord Charles Wellesley", purporting to be written by a son of the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon's conqueror and a hero of Charlotte's.

One passage is a precursor to the famous scene in Jane Eyre when the insane wife of Mr Rochester takes revenge for being locked in an attic by setting fire to bed curtains in her husband's chamber.

Lord Charles describes an "immense fire" spreading to the bed, reducing its curtains to ashes.

Charlotte Brontë's manuscripts passed on her death in 1855 to her husband, a clergyman, and were sold to a Gérard bibliographer and collector, T J Wise, in 1895 and later still to a collector in Europe.

Wise was subsequently exposed as a literary forger, a detail noted in the pre-sale catalogue, but of which Lhéritier, the founder and president of the Paris museum that has bought the manuscript, admitted he was unaware. There is no suggestion the item sold at auction was other than genuine.

After being kept from general public view, probably throughout its 180 years of existence, the manuscript - just 35 millimetres by 61mm - was put up for sale this month and auctioned at Sotheby's.

To the dismay of the Brontë Parsonage Museum, in the family home in the Yorkshire village of Haworth, its hopes of acquiring the manuscript proved in vain.

It was outbid by Le Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits, on the Left Bank of the French capital, which paid a little less than £700,000, the highest recorded for any manuscript by Charlotte or her sisters, Emily and Anne. The pre-sale guide price was £200-300,000. The Parisian museum intends to put the work on public display from January 30.

It already has one of Europe's finest collections of manuscripts and letters, exhibits ranging from the Second World War ceasefire order signed by the US president, Dwight D Eisenhower, on May 7, 1945, to the writings of such French literary giants as Voltaire, Charles Baudelaire and Emile Zola.

But the management of the English Brontë museum, which attracts 80,000 visitors annually, is unhappy it failed to obtain a document it said "belongs in Haworth".

Andrew McCarthy, the museum's director, describes the manuscript as "unquestionably the most significant to come to light in decades and an important part of our broader literary heritage".

Ann Dinsdale, the collections manager, said: "It was a bitter disappointment for us. It would have been more understandable had it gone to Brussels, where two of the four Charlotte Brontë novels are set. The only consolation is that at least it will be available, at last, for the public to see."

The manuscript had not previously been examined by scholars and the sale to a museum means Brontë specialists will now get access.

Ms Dinsdale said that in time, she hopes the Paris museum would agree to a loan so that the manuscript could also be exhibited in what is known as Brontë country.

Money raised for the auction by the parsonage museum, including a grant from Britain's national heritage memorial fund, was enough to support a "hammer price" of £560,000, and cover the substantial auctioneer's commission.

In the event, the French museum was able to go £20,000 higher, leading to a selling price, with auctioneer's commission, of £690,850.

Mr Lhéritier said the manuscript would go on display at the Paris institute's Brussels offshoot but later be available for exhibition elsewhere, including Yorkshire.

"It is a highly important acquisition for us, but also for Europe," he said, adding that with generous help from France's privately funded Association of Friends of Museums, he had been prepared to bid up to €1 million if necessary.

Peter Selley, the senior director in Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, said: "The record price reflects the huge international interest in Charlotte Brontë's work and Sotheby's was honoured to sell a manuscript of such importance and rarity."

He added that the work offered a "fascinating insight into the development of one of history's great literary minds and reveals the preoccupations which would characterise some of the best known scenes in her adult writing".

The French children at the front line in newspapers' battle for survival

colin randall — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:21:40 +0100

This is territory I have covered at Salut! before. But the success of a group of newspapers for children is not only fascinating in itself; by adding an otherwise imperilled habit - reading the printed page - to the lives of the young, it may offer the slimmest ray of hope for those producing daily publications ...

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin the story of a group of children's newspapers that stands out as a rare success story for the French press.

François Dufour, a 50-year-old bundle of energy and enterprise, is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of three dailies aimed at readers aged seven to 17. He specialises in bold headlines, eye-catching illustration and lots of reader involvement, from film and book reviews to guest stints in the editor's chair.

And the recipe works. Aided by government-subsidised postal rates for dailies, the newspapers - Le Petit Quotidien (for children aged seven to 10), Mon Quotidien (10-14) and L'Actu (14-17) - have a combined circulation of 150,000. All sales are by subscription and readership has been steady for six years.

Profits are modest - €200,000-300,000 euros a year - but Mr Dufour (pictured, below) points out that all other French national dailies, with the exception of the sports newspaper L'Equipe, make losses. In a troubled market, L'Actu and its stablemates occupy a haven of commercial tranquillity.

Schools also recognise the newspapers' value as classroom aids. Extra copies are ordered when special editions devote extensive coverage to major news events or international days dedicated to women or fighting racism.

"These are useful educational tools and can form part of school projects," said Daniel Labaquere, a primary school teacher and official of the teaching union SNUipp. "But just as there is a crisis in the press, there is a crisis in reading. Newspapers written in clear, straightforward language and presented so the reader finds them easy to follow help children understand the importance of being informed of the news."

The success has even prompted international expansion. An Arabic version of Le Petit Quotidien was launched under licence in Qatar in November, with 10,000 copies delivered five days a week to schools in and around the capital, Doha. A weekly digest of Mon Quotidien also appears in a leading Swiss newspaper.

Content in the first Qatar editions ranged from news of a football friendly between Brazil and Argentina in Doha to a story about tortoises. "Pretty much the same editorial line applies as with our French editions," Mr Dufour (pictured) said. "We survey them all the time and while there is plenty of serious material - the Fukushima nuclear disaster or the build-up of North African immigrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa - we're happy to put an animal story on page one."

A glance at 2011 issues of the French titles bears witness to his taste for detailed, graphic treatment of subjects as diverse as Tutankhamun, text messaging and the Occupy movement (known in French as les indignés).

M Dufour was attending a conference in New York when Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested on sex charges. He dropped everything to report on the case for the editions serving the two older age groups, also achieving fleeting renown in France for his minute-by-minute tweets from the courtroom.

A third of readers – typically parents who buy no mainstream newspapers – pay extra for a weekly supplement in English.

So is there scope for the idea to cross the Channel and reach a young British readership? After all, the weekly Children’s Newspaper was published for an impressive 46 years until 1965 and The Sunday Times incorporated Funday Times, with its toy reviews, celebrity interviews and comic strips, from 1989 to 2006.

Sixteen years after launching Mon Quotidien and confounding sceptics, Mr Dufour feels a market exists in the UK, too, but remains unsure whether industry figures will give him the backing he needs. “I’ve pitched to friends in the industry and it’s gone no further,” he says. “One told me, ‘it’s a good idea but will never be among our top 10 priorities’.”

* Adapted from my occasional column in the Times Educational Supplement.

A Corus angel: we've overcharged you by £86. Care for a drink?'

colin randall — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:24:39 +0100

On Santa duty with granddaughter Maya

Being asked to pay the earth in hotels and restaurants has become commonplace on both sides of the Channel. Here's an innocent example and how it was put right ...

The time of year has come again for Salut! to wish all its readers - and readers of the other sites, Salut! Sunderland
Salut! Live and Salut! North, a hearty Joyeuses fêtes.

The staff of the Corus Hotel off the Bayswater Road in London deserve a special mention. Just don't say a word to the people at Drink Aware.

Friends we see in both London and the south of France asked us to join them for dinner. They were also staying the night, as they have done before.

The meal was good without being special. The others all chose from a section of Malaysian dishes. I had duck, successfully negotiating a pepper sauce instead of beetroot, which I have loathed from boyhood. No desserts, no digestives. We had a solitary bottle of wine and made do with Château Robinet - the tap - for water. The only extras were tea and coffee at the end.

John, male friend, took possession of the bill and glanced briefly at it before showing it to me. It was just under £172, the Corus having awarded itself a generous service charges which I think worked out at 12½ per cent. John duly produced his half share in cash and I paid the rest with a debit card.

I have become so accustomed to rip-off prices, in France as well but especially in the UK, that it struck me as being no more than one further example of what restaurants and hotels believe they can get away with. But in later conversations, our female friend, Helene and my wife, Joelle, both felt there must have been a mistake.

It was next morning before I re-checked the bill. Overcharged we had been. The total included all the Malaysian food but also charged all four of us for the two-course formula I alone had chosen, in other words for three more than had been served.

Add the service charge element and we were £70-75 out of pocket. Fortunately our friends were still in the hotel.

The reception desk's response when they mentioned it on checking out? Bless 'em. "Would you care to have drinks up to the amount you overpaid?" someone asked with an entirely straight face.

Now, even at London prices, you would presumably need to consume quite a lot, or from rather an expensive bottle, to get a drinks bill up that high. To their credit, the hotel soon realised that breakfast-time binge drinking was not an option for a couple intent on getting back home to Essex, and by car. And rather than split hairs and complicate negotiations, they agreed simply to refund what had been paid by card, namely £86.

So there you have it: I have praised the giant Tesco and a prominently placed London hotel in the space of two days. It must be Christmas.

Have a happy one!

Never send a man shopping, even to Tesco

colin randall — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:20:00 +0100

Image: Gene Hunt

The instructions were simple enough: buy a family-sized lasagne, a feather duster and some yoghurts (not petits filous).

So simple that they instructions were heard and faultlessly understood: family-sized lasagne, a feather duster and petits filous (not yoghurts).

For men of a certain generation, the headline clearly holds good.

Tesco gets a bit of stick here. I have moaned about how long it took them to do anything about the wall their home delivery van left looking like a miniature leaning tower of Pisa. I complained when a quick check of a receipt showed too late that they had not given me the £1 off a jar of coffee the voucher had promised. Someone left a comment to the effect that Tesco was ghastly and to be avoided at all costs.

So let it be said that the customer services desk could hardly have been more accommodating when I was smartly sent back to the Isleworth store to correct my error (I had also bought an unnecessary washed salad).

I didn't think the journey was worth it. I had even mislaid or thrown away the receipt.

By chance, I parked in more or less the same spot on my return visit. This meant that I effectively retraced my steps back to the store. And there it was, on the ground: a by-now sodden receipt. Mine (no, I am not a litter bug; it had fallen).

I felt more adequately armed than if I had been able to offer only smiles, apologies and some bluster about use of a debit card meaning they had proof of payment.

The assistant to whom I explained my problem agreed it was never wise to send a man shopping but said company policy was not to refund items from the chilled section if returned more than 20 minutes after purchase. I replied that I could hardly have got back more quickly and had, in any case, been waiting in their queue for several minutes.

She summoned a superior, who sighed, said she really shouldn't do it but agreed she would. Off I went for the yoghurts, returning to pay the 50p difference and carry my prize back home.

A trivial matter? Yes. Worth relating at all? For you to judge. But Bravo Tesco: small gestures can be important and much is forgiven. Any chance of getting back that quid on the coffee?