St Davy, Montcuq*

St Davy
Yesterday's weather: sunny, reasonable 18 degrees.
* All will be revealed

I've been trying to find out the origin of the French St Davy, and can't locate anything. I tried a search on French websites but there's nothing coming up. Why would the French use the diminutive form? I think I may have come up with an answer. Do you remember The Monkees? Davy Jones, he was quite small, I don't know how big they were in France, but maybe they have nominated him a diminutive, living saint. He was always my favourite Monkee anyway.

Whilst searching for information on St Davy I found on the Orange France website an article relating to a local village so I thought I'd spend a few minutes introducing you to French humour. It is fairly well know that the French love slapstick. Benny Hill is still a big hero here - there are hundreds of sites where you can download the theme tune to use as your ring tone. Luckily I haven't heard it anywhere yet. They also embrace Eddie Izzard but I don't know whether it's his dress sense they like or the humour itself.

Some years ago now, a television series called Le Petit Rapporteur, an irreverent look at news stories, did an article on a small village in the Lot called Montcuq. Twenty years later, in recognition of the boom in tourism created by this programme, Montcuq named one of it's roads rue du Petit Rapporteur. Now, isn't that nice?

Locals pronounce the final 'q' in the name Montcuq but normally in French the final consonant is not pronounced. Thus Montcuq would be pronouced 'mon coo' or to the French 'mon cul' meaning 'my arse'.

The reporter began his report by announcing:

'Aujourd'hui, pour la première fois à la télévision, je vais vous montrer Montcuq' (Today for the first time on television, I am going to show you my a**e').

It went downhill from there:

'I have the impression that my a*s* is very narrow, does it often become blocked?' He asked of the narrow streets.

'I believe you can get here by bus, but I've never seen the terminus of my a*s*'.

Continuing with refrerences to the 'pure, clean air of my a*s*', he was followed around by locals reminding him that the 'q' is not silent (unlike the p in bath - think about it).

Nowadays the village thanks him for the notoriety he gave, there are postcards on sale with pictures of scantily clad (female) behinds promising 'lovely kisses from Montcuq'.... Dear me.

Toilet humour lives on, thanks to the renaming of one street in this very pretty Lotois village!