According to a recent global survey by the TTRA-funded Bad Manners Review, French tourists are the worst to tolerate on God’s Earth where travel matters are concerned.
The survey canvassed 450,000 hotels and resorts worldwide, some of them no more than grass huts and beach front sheds, to rank tourists on their behaviour abroad.
The Japanese tourist class – considered by foreigners as easier to deal with since losing World War Two and getting Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuked for good measure - came top for the third year running.
Their only listed fault being the addiction to photographing every bugger and their dog – including each other – a syndrome which never fails to kick in while at their homeland airport departure lounges waiting to fly out on vacation.
US tourists were scored as the ones most likely to try and communicate in a new language – get it totally wrong – insult their hosts - and cause yet another diplomatic incident of Biblical proportions such as the Afghanistan and Iraq quagmires.
However US tourists got top marks for being naïve and gullible, much to the joy of foreign vendors who had a special price for Americans : twice as much as everyone else.
Germans were viewed overall as loud, callous, dictatorial dumkopfs who always wanted to be in charge and annex something - and cause another war if there was no bratwurst – or sauerkraut - on the menu, and pilsner came in anything less than a two litre tankard.
Somalians, Ethiopians and Sudanese in tourist mode got bad marks due the fact they acted like locusts and ate everything in sight in the hotel reception areas – including newspapers and floral displays – and the poolside lounger cushions and complimentary towels.
Albanians scored low in the survey due their hereditary thieveing pikey propensity for poaching ducks and swans off ornamental ponds wherever they visited, and generally stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down - then having to be bailed out of local jails by their tour operators.
Arabs, with the septic Saudis topping the raghead list, rated an A for being Arseholes, a double BB for Belicose Barbarians, and a C Plus for being Conceited Cunts. They also took the Kleptomania award for being the only tourists that ever got arrested for shoplifting while having a purse full of cash.
Norwegians being placed first - with Scandanavian neighbours Sweden and Denmark right behind – were classed numero uno for patience and queueing up for anything – in all and any weathers - sometimes even forming a series of tributary queues waiting to join the main queue.
Conversely all three nationalities were rated high on the whinge list if there wasn’t any fish on the menu or they were called upon to think for themselves or use mental arithmetic.
Australians were rated as ‘bearable’ as long as there was a bar open somewhere, cricket on the TV and an eskie full of cold beer – each - in cans.
The British were graded as a race of tourists who only took a bath once a year – whether they needed one or not – and the type of people you could take anywhere twice – the second time to apologise.
Bulgarian, Rumanian and Polish tourists were scored as tighter than a Shylock’s sphincter even when they had money to spend - and having a bad habit of pimping their female relatives around foreign holiday locations to earn a few bob extra if the sex trade looked prospective.
But the overall winners – and historical enemies of most of Europe (and Indo-China) – the French – were awarded by the survey the dubious sobriquet of ‘Gorfs’ (backward ‘Frogs’).
Possessed by an unlimited supply of unqualified arrogance they were deemed by the survey adjudicators as forever the first to boast yet nevertheless always the first to whinge – about anything - and were summed up as unwashed, penny-pinching, rude and terrible when attempting to communicate in foreign languages – including French.
