London. Victoria Station. It’s January 1976. I am 18. As I walk towards High St. Ken, wondering, « what the hell am I doing here? » (Albeit in French, as my English then was rusty to the point of non-existence), I look around to the unfamiliar landscape so different from my native Provence, the black cab driving on the « wrong side of the road », the brick housing, the single panel windows, the bobbies, the parks, the neon on so many window shops, the Tube and the coloured lines (mine will be the Yellow one for the next 6 months during my sojourn as a foreign student). Not to mention its inhabitants epitomized by an 80 year old lady, my lodger. In February, feeling really low after my French girl friend announced that she was now going out with my best friend (never leave home and a woman behind you!) Mrs Turner will tell me (and I will then learn one of my first sayings in English): « Oliver, don’t you worry, there’s many fish in the sea ». How appropriate for a frog.

1982. June. I have left this morning the hot Provence to arrive again at Victoria Station under rather cool temperatures (ah the weather!). I head straight to Wembley Stadiums for the Rolling Stones’ concert. What a start for another stay in London. I am a French Assistant then near Greenwich. I live in Lewisham High Street in a cold, freezing 2 bedroom flat that I share with a German Lecturer. Every Sunday, I work as a jazz presenter on University College Hospital Radio. I learned everything not to do when presenting a music show. The experience will be invaluable and to this day I still cherish the Sunday trips by bus from Lewisham to North London. The adrenalin of doing a live show before going to the South Bank overlooking the river Thames for a tea and cakes with a fellow presenter.

Same city. February again. But this time it’s 1987, more than 11 years after I first set foot on the « White Cliffs of Dover ». My English has improved. I finished my BA in English; I have lived in Kenya for a couple of years, then in Washington, DC, working as a stringer then a journalist. Now I can utter a few words in English. Rather proud of it I’d say, a feeling reinforced when I speak to a British person as he or she frequently asks: « Are you British? Your English is so perfect»… Very kind, but after two or three pints of beer, the mask falls and the frog reappears.

An island nation

I am walking down Kingsway, as I will do for the next 9 years, towards the BBC World Service where I will work as a producer for the French Service (the one General de Gaulle used in 1940, though his speech was never recorded and he had to come back to the beeb the following morning to record it). I will slowly melt into the « British Way of Life » including the « British Way of Journalism». Cool, distant, balanced, researched, facts, facts, facts. Which always reminds me of Dickens’s Nicholas Nickelby. How completely different from the Latin version of journalism: comments, comments, and comments. Preferably around a glass of wine for the sheer pleasure of intellectual confrontation which is so foreign to the pragmatic approach of life of the inhabitants of this island nation. Always distancing themselves in particular from Europe: there are this island and the continental Europe despite being part of the European Union. Old habits never die.

I will meet some journalist whom I still admire. To name only a few: John Tusa, before he became head of the BBC World Service, or Anna Ford, met one summer day on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix who will kindly invite me to see the 6 pm TV newscast. I never met Nick Clarke (from the Word at One) but I listened to him almost every day. He was the quintessence of the real journo, an icon to be preserved whose savoir-faire should be passed on to the next generation with his deep voice and his carefully researched information. I also remember vividly Jeremy Paxman’s interview of Michael Howard to whom he put the same question 12 times in 1997. Truly, British TV is so different from the platitude of French programmes.

Last but not least: the sense of humour.  Monty Pythons’ Flying Circus on the BBC (who won the Football World Cup in 1966, hmm?), Fawlty Tower with the blunderer John Cleese and his gorgon wife, « A bit of Fry and Laurie », long before Hugh became Dr House. And now for something completely different: the end.

Olivier Jacoulet – March 2013 (projet MAPPING THE ENTENTE CORDIALE - Franco-British Council - 40ème anniversaire - Avril 13)