Antoine back to delight his ‘Breetish chums’

Although the UK and France are only separated by a gap of 20 miles, the gulf between our two countries seems huge when filtered through Antoine de Caunes’ lens.

If you need proof, just takealookatEurotrash(Friday, Channel4,9pm), which returns to British screens this week after a nine year gap.

A mix of old and new clips should remind fans what they have been missing, and introduce a new generation of viewers to the tongue-in-cheek celebration of all things bizarre.

Antoine and original cohost Jean Paul Gaultier are joined by guests including transgender supermodel Andreja Pejic, and a man who uses something more personal than a brush to paint his masterpieces. Well, quite. The one thing we won’t get is a serious assessment of Antoine’s career, which is a shame because while many TV presenters seem like they are massproduced in a factory, de Caunes was the prototype whosmashed the mould when he started making waves on BBC2 in the late 1980s.

At the time the Beeb were trying to appeal to a streetwise audience with their teatime strand Def II. His little show called Rapidomadeitsdebutonthebox and turned the suave Gallic frontman into a cult star.

Between 1988 and 1992, theseries intrigued millions in 14 countries, but while it always felt like a bit of a square peg in a round hole, follow up show Eurotrash slotted into Channel 4’s late night schedules like a wellcrafted jigsaw piece.

From 1993, the delightfully acerbic de Caunes would greet post-pub revellers with “Hallo myBreetish chums”, before introducing us to bizarre European pastimes and individuals.

They included a man who dressed as a penguin and people who pretended to be horses. It was saucier than the FoliesBergere, and often laugh-out loud funny, thanks to comments from the participants translated into broad British regional accents by the likes of Spitting Image veteran Kate Robbins. It also gave Melinda Messenger and Graham Norton a chance to shine as roving reporters, while the latter’s Radio 2 colleague Maria McErlane provided the narration.

Whether due to the rise of the internet, whenweirdclips were available at the click of a mouse, or an audience growing tired of the format, the plug was eventually pulled in 2007.

However, deCauneshasalways been more than just the TVfrontmanwholovespoking funattheaudiences, sohehad plenty of irons in many fires.

Overtheyearshe’s penned a novel (Good But Hot), and helmed assorted projects, including the films Love Bites (aka Les morsures de l’aube) and the TV movie Yann Piat, chronique d’un assassinat.

No, we’ve never heard of them either, or the countless other projects he’s been involved in (with the exception of Mr Bean’s Holiday).

Not t hat i t matters, because l i ke TFI Friday, Loaded magazine and Men Behaving Badly, Antoine is a reminder of that time when the media didn’t take itself too seriously and every serving was dished up with lashings of sauce.