Twaddle, says LIBBY PURVES. Better a dolled up Brit than a stuck-up French stick insect

SHOuLD we hang our heads, ladies, under the haughty rebuke of Dame Kristin Scott thomas? Should we accept her accusations that we’re nothing but vulgar, unsubtle, badly dressed, bright orange, failed fashion victims?

Sounding off to Marie France this week, the eminent actress who hails from Redruth, Cornwall, but never tires of reminding us that Paris is her home, pulled no punches.

Her litany of charges read like that of a headmistress berating an entire female nation for cutting an inch off its collective uniform skirt.

Englishwomen, she told her refined French audience, dress badly, wear short skirts with fat legs, are plastered in fake tan, get drunk on a Saturday in a mini skirt in November and, heaven help us, ‘abuse our sexiness’.

Frenchwomen, she says, are both ‘more natural’ and ‘ take better care of themselves’.

Is she right? Only up to a point. I have lived in France, was at an ordinary school there for three years, visit often, and have spent time doing interviews with both young mothers and singletons there about my childcare books.

I love France and the French, but unlike many British romantic expats I am not deluded about the country.

And I can tell you that if you venture outside the rareified Parisian districts through which our Kristin floats in immaculate tailoring, you’ll see plenty of women who clearly throw on whatever clothes are closest to hand in the morning and run to work via the childminder.

You’ll spot plenty of don’t-care frumps, too, and not a few fat legs.

Whereas over here, yes, you will certainly see girls who unwisely decide to reinvent themselves as tacky Kardashians at the weekend, and fall over drunk in the street in miniskirts.

It isn’t quite as common as we pretend, actually, and I doubt Dame Kristin, not known for her prowling of the British pub and nightclub scene, has any first-hand evidence for her patrician views.

For while, I agree, it is always sad to see pretty, youthful looks abused with fake tan and ludicrous trollopwear, most young women grow out of that crass period of their lives, all too often chastened by painful memories of drunken antics the night before.

But look around in the street or office where you work and you’ll see plenty of neat, stylish Englishwomen, shiny-haired and smiling, dressed in just the right outfits for a busy day ahead.

Perhaps they’re not as selfconsciously tailored as the nervy Parisian types Kristin so evidently admires, but they certainly aren’t all luminously orange or flashing acres of thigh.

And you know what? they’re more accessible, more matey, more, dare I say it, huggable than any starch-lined, brutally tailored, immaculately coiffed, scornful fembot posing her way up the Champs-Elysees.

But what Kristin Scott thomas is doing — although more thoroughly, since she actually chooses to live there — is just another example of a common British holidaymakers’ delusion that the French own the secret of happiness.

there are books declaring that French women don’t get fat; there’s another claiming French children don’t throw food, but give chic maman a calm, enjoyable parenting experience (with plenty of time to preen in her mirror), unlike our frazzled or downright hysterical British mums.

As for Brits who rave about French eating habits, all dainty salads and stockpots and homecooked ragouts, I refer you to the fact that two years ago the Champs-Elysees branch of M&S sold more chicken tikka masalas than any branch in the uK, and the fifth highest number of BLt sandwiches anywhere.

Next time you go to a French hypermarket, wearing rose-tinted goggles and clutching a copy of A Year In Provence, before you pounce on the brie and patisserie, notice the aisle of ready meals stretching into the distance.

And look behind you: grande Madame struggling with her trolley has never heard that French women don’t get fat, and the concierge at the door, a furious aged crow, has about as much time for chic as her gallant, twojob British cousin manning the till at Morrisons.

Of course affluent, careful Frenchwomen do look good; but so do Englishwomen, though they are less likely to obey the deadly, Chanel-clenched rules of chic than a Parisienne.

there is more quirky, entertaining, original, fun fashion in any British town than across the Channel: why else does the world flock to our designers?

Here, new ideas and looks tend to generate from the street, from the people, not handed down from the great, often rather weird and misogynistic, male lords of big French fashion houses.

So Dame Kristin can put a sock in it. Our gallant, lairy, sometimes wildly dressed lasses have a charm all their own. And as for the mini-skirted drunks, most of them reform, and laugh at their old selfies.

As for her assertion that British attitudes to older women mean that she doesn’t get offered as many good parts here as in France, far be it from me to murmur ‘sour grapes’, or remind the haughty dame that she has several Olivier nominations, and has just had two stonking lead roles on the London stage — one at the Old Vic as a ragged, ranting Elektra, the other following Helen Mirren into the role of HM Queen in the Audience.

In that play, it is worth noting, she didn’t quite cut the mustard after Mirren, for the simple reason that the Queen has an undertow of genuine womanly warmth below her dutiful formality.

HELEN Mirren caught that beautifully, whereas the Frenchified chill, the arrogant offended-camel look which is Scott thomas’ trademark, is all very well on screen playing tragic aristos but threw an icy numbness over her attempt to be Elizabeth II.

It’s not your age, Kristin; it’s your camel sneer, the icy public manner. We’re still queuing up for Dame Judi, Harriet Walter, the gloriously dishevelled Emma thompson, the quirky Julie Walters.

And in 30 years’ time we’ll still be cheering for the all-British, girlnext- door, larky warmth and honesty of Sheridan Smith. Even remembering fondly that the outfits she wore in the tV series two Pints of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps would raise a ‘ Quelle horreur!’ from Dame K.

So let timorous French ladies obey the dreary rules of chic. Our free- spirited girls may make mistakes, but they do so with exuberance. they are not fembots.

Whether in bizarre shorts ’n’ tights combinations, hippy or mini skirts, ridiculous fake furs or even more ridiculous fake tans, let our bold British Boudiccas rock!