"Je descends!" This is the most valuable phrase that the English-speaking monoglot in Paris can learn. "I’m getting off!" You say it, jauntily at first, as you try to exit the Métro by pushing past a scrummage of hard-faced commuters — the elbow-jabbing rabble who, the instant the doors slide open, bundle headlong onto the train. By the time you hear the ping that signifies the doors are closing, your voice will have reached a pitch of shrill agitato: "Je descends!" you holler. "Je de-fucking-scends!" But by then, you’ll be hurtling in the direction of Barbes Rochechouart, cursing the entire Gallic race.

The French, to be fair, have a lot going for them. The wine. The cheese. The hair. The French have the best hair on the planet — thick, lustrous, immaculately coifed. Yet when I went to a Paris salon to get my own wispy locks snipped, the stylist contrived to make the hair on the top of my head form a quilt of cowlicks, while the back hung down in a limp mini-mullet. As I left, the stylist’s beatific smile seemed to mask malign triumph.

Perhaps I’m just bitter. Our trip to Paris did not get off to a good start. Within minutes of arriving at Gare du Nord station, a sticky-fingered lout had liberated my girlfriend from her wallet — and the 300 euros it contained. The tale of the lost wallet, related to a nearby gendarme, elicited little more than the philosophical response, "Nothing is lost at Gare du Nord," and an amused shrug. The French, it has to be said, are magnificent shruggers.

A few days later, in London, I had another — less costly — surprise. I landed in Europe expecting to be besieged by anti-American feeling. This was, to some extent, the case in France, where a book claiming the US had fabricated the September 11 attack on the Pentagon topped the bestseller list. Even though the French media pooh-poohed this theory, conventional wisdom held that George W. is a bumbling buffoon and the US a bellicose bully bent on using September 11 to impose its will on the world.

In the UK, meanwhile — despite unease over the decision to commit 1700 British combat troops to Afghanistan and the prime minister’s increasingly lonely pro-US stance with regard to attacking Iraq — anti-US sentiment confined itself to a series of blistering tirades against Britney Spears, who was said to have snubbed fans at the UK premiere of her movie. Otherwise, the Brits didn’t have time to hate the Americans. They were too busy hating the French.

First, French officials were accused of turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants entering the UK on Eurostar trains. Then came a series of attacks on French synagogues. But nothing fueled British ire more than the story of French trucker who, driving on the wrong side of an English road, killed a bus driver and then refused to pay a fine for his misdeed, insisting that the Brits should drive on the right side of the road like everyone else.

"This trucker’s attitude is typical French arrogance," carped a letter-writer to the UK tabloid the Sun. "How much more evidence does the pro-EU [European Union] faction need to see that the French think they are above us?" wrote another. "It is clear the French have nothing but dislike for us."

A few days into our Paris trip, a waiter refused to serve me a certain liqueur with my dessert — he simply wouldn’t be a party to this culinary faux pas. Herein lies the nub of Anglo-Gallic discord. Though many observers express puzzlement over the fact that the UK continues to align itself with the US rather than the EU, there is no real mystery here. Being dragged into an open-ended war with Iraq or Al Qaeda we Brits can handle. But a French waiter looking down his nose at us? Non.