Anglo-French tensions heightened last night after Jacques Chirac delivered a series of insults to Britain as London and Paris fought to secure the 2012 Olympic Games and faced fresh disagreement at the G8 summit.
The president, chatting to the German and Russian leaders in a Russian cafe, said: "The only thing [the British] have ever given European farming is mad cow." Then, like generations of French people before him, he also poked fun at British cuisine.
"You can't trust people who cook as badly as that," he said. "After Finland, it's the country with the worst food."
"But what about hamburgers?" said Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, referring to America.
"Oh no, hamburgers are nothing in comparison," Mr Chirac said.
Mr Putin and Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, laughed. Mr Chirac then recalled how George Robertson, the former Nato secretary general and a former defence secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet, had once made him try an "unappetising" Scottish dish, apparently meaning haggis.
"That's where our problems with Nato come from," he said.
Mr Schröder and Mr Putin laughed again.
Has anyone here eaten haggis?
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