Paris:- Friday, 3. January 1997:- This edition of the week's news, is advanced by a day so all concerned with producing Metropole can cool out for a bit - and readers will just have to find other sources for Paris news, until Metropole returns on Monday, 20. January. As they say, sorry for the inconvenience - sincerely.

New Year's Eve French-TV Non-Event

After wandering around Paris all afternoon on New Year's Eve, I was not frantically anxious to go out in the even more freezing evening. No babysitters to hire, no unknown address to find, and no hassle is a good way to end the year.

The one invitation I had, and it sounded like an attractive one - because the invite said, "We've got a minimum of 30 litres of wine - Domaine Dutertre, 1995 Touraine Gamay - a few kilos of saussison, pates, rillettes, baguettes, Moët, music, etc" - I declined as gracefully as I could.

Le Parisien had told me that the Champs-Elysées had been selected as the spot for Paris' public party. It was to be closed around 21:30, from Concorde to the Etoile, and all the side streets as well. Being on this wide-open avenue in the weather we have seemed kind of doubtful to me, but the sheltered side-streets could be another story.

If I could not been there in person, I expected TV to have in covered from top to bottom.

To be sure not to miss anything, I turned the TV on at 21:00. A2, one of the two national state-TV channels, had hauled Michel Drucker - who used to have a very popular Saturday night variety show, that even I used to watch - out of his nightly before-the-news slot to host a dismal taped-two-weeks-in-advance 'gala' show. I say dismal, because something was wrong with the color: no whites, no blacks, just all grey, and Drucker himself looked like he would have preferred staying in bed. The main featured guest was Céline Dion.

Although this lady has taken the lead on a lot of pop music charts around the world during the past year, she is only an average singer, and ditto for her looks. Miss Dion preferred to have her New Yea's Eve 'live' in Montreal, and I believe that is the reason the show was taped. The good part was, all who helped the video-taping two weeks ago, got New Year's Eve off.

The private national station TF1, after the 56th rerun of an old comedy clunker, came on at 22:30 with some fellow named 'Arthur,' who looks like a well-fed minor functionary with rimless Lenin-style glasses, leading some very colorful junk, and running it with song lyrics at the bottom of the screen as sort of a karaoké thing for both the unknown people in the studio and us nearly equally unknown viewers. Arthur's girls were good-looking though, and I tried it for a while with the sound off and Joe Cocker's Greatest Hits on the CD-player. But the subtitled lyrics got to me so I zapped on.

The other national state channel, FR3, had a long movie on in cinemascope, which on French screens puts a black band at top and bottom and a gives full-width movie in a narrow strip in the middle. I can switch my 4:3-ratio TV to 16:9, but I didn't bother. The private M6 channel had the extraordinary adventures of Cervantes playing and the culture channel Arte started off with a documentary, part one of six about the Strauss family, followed by an operetta by Strauss, in three acts, for two hours and 17 minutes.

I can understand it if you are as bored by this as I was by the TV. Zapping: there's a Dion close-up with her mouth open, or Michel Drucker falling greyly asleep - zap to Arthur and color junk with subtitles, - zap to Sean Connery in a turban, - zap to the cable channel Paris Premiere's endless fashion show with eternal guest star Elton John, - zap to CNN and the 'war today someplace,' - zap, zap, zap - zap to state FR3 and hey! Wow! Its the Lido with its tall girls courting serious chest problems and very fancy costumes.

The problem with the Lido show on FR3 was that it was a collection of past shows and after fifteen minutes it was appaent that all the shows have basically the same girls and moves, and it is only the costumes which change.