I noticed this pic on PurePeople. Nicolas I of France was having a meal with Mohammed VI of Morocco. Just wondering, if he is really a guy who doesn't touch alcohol why does he need four glasses?

The year 2009 marked the death of four famous Frogsmokers. From left to right:

Claude Berri (actor, writer, producer, and director, died aged 84)
Alain Bashung (singer, songwriter and actor, died aged 61)
Maurice Druon (novelist and a member of the Académie Française, died aged 90)
Claude Lévi-Strauss (anthropologist and ethnologist, died aged 100)
May they rest in peace!

..digging for leftovers in a supermarket bin
Show bigger
Via

Three years after the start of the smoking ban, the French start puffing again at work and just about everywhere else.
The French anti-smoking lobby has just released a desperate report which shows that smoking is back at the workplace, where it was banned in 2007.
One in five workers now complain about other people's smoke, [...]

In 1976, French fizzy water manufacturer Perrier caused a scandal with a suggestive TV advert in which a caressing hand makes a small bottle grow until it pops. The commercial (which was directed by Serge Gainsbourg) was promptly forbidden and never saw the light again. Until now. Perrier has remastered the old film and shows [...]

Just when he's about to retire the world finally knows who's behind "the biggest rock star you've never heard of".
(And contrary to what some people say on Facebook he's not dead yet.)

It can't be easy to be historically accurate and politically correct:

Call the smoke censors — Coco has a cigarette!
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is an upcoming French film directed by Jan Kounen. It was the closing film of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. The film traces the affair between Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky in [...]

On Flickr: another Parisian menu, celebrating great crudeness, and serving salmon paving stone, in (or with?) a fried house:

From a menu in a Parisian restaurant:

More Sign Language in the Telegraph

(From the Sign Language series in the Times)

Cheesipedia wants to be a catalog of all the world's cheeses.
That sounds like a wonderful idea, doesn't it? Unfortunately, they're off to a bad start. One can forgive the people behind the site for being incomplete at this stage (no cheeses from Holland, and only a fraction of what France produces) but the site [...]

The French (and some foreign journalists) can't stop talking about the Sarkozy cameo on the Simpsons (see here). But will the show actually ever appear on French TV? Remember the loi Evin which forbids any reference to tobacco or alcohol in advertising and public media. Well, Carlita is doing something very politically incorrect here — [...]

The Selby is a site featuring photographs, paintings and videos by Todd Selby of interesting people and their creative spaces. Recently he had a look at Inès de la Fressange's workplace in Paris:

Via Wikipedia: In the 1980s, Inès de la Fressange became the first model to sign an exclusive modeling contract with an haute couture [...]

Here we go again. First we had Jacques Tati, then Audrey Tautou, then Alain Delon, then Jacques Chirac, and now it's Serge Gainsbourg's turn.

The agency that manages the advertising on Paris buses and metros has rejected a poster for the upcoming biopic about French icon Serge Gainsbourg.
The makers of the poster were confident that [...]

This will make some people in Reims very unhappy: Bargain champagne beats top brands in blind taste challenge
Bargain champagne sold by supermarkets [in the UK] is more than a match for the big name brands, it has been claimed. Champagnes from Sainsbury's and the Co-op have beaten the prestige French houses in a blind taste [...]