France’s summer smash at the cinema is set to be a comedy called The Perfects. It opens next week with an all-star cast that includes Scottish actor Alan Cumming. The Perfects are a family of con-artists who flee France to escape the police and they end up in Scotland where madcap adventures in tartan ensue. It’s further proof that France can’t get enough of Bonnie Scotland. Films, television documentaries, newspaper features and even a puff piece earlier this month on the primetime lunchtime news about a visit to the most isolated pub in Scotland.
Billy Connolly once famously likened Scottish folk singers to ‘singing shortbread tins’, churning out clichéd lyrics about mountains, heather and a Roamin’ in the Gloamin.’ Garbage!’, roared the Big Yin.
As a proud half-Scot, I feel the same about a lot of what I see and read in France about Scotland. It’s all kilts, castles and crackling log fires. ‘An autumn stroll through the world of tartan,’ was the headline in Le Figaro last December. The feature described the history of tartan and kilts and also introduced readers to a French couple living in Edinburgh. They fell in love with Scotland a decade ago and now make high-quality kilts. They also ‘organise talks on tartan at the French Institute in Scotland to raise awareness of this fabric’.
I can vouch for this Gallic amour for the kilt. I married my French wife in her home city of Rodez in a kilt, and such was the excitement generated that our photo made the local paper. I’ve attended other weddings in France where my kilt has gone down a storm.
The French don’t just like to read articles and watch programmes about Scotland; they visit in vast numbers. On average, 260,000 French holiday each year in Scotland, a figure bettered only American tourists. A lot of the Yanks are on the trail of long-lost relatives but the French come for the culture and the countryside. Scotland featured recently in the top ten European destinations for a camper car road trip this summer, offering travellers ‘a total immersion in nature that is both untamed and spectacular’.
A growing number of French visitors enjoyed Scotland so much they decided to set up home. There are more than 6,000 expatriates in Scotland – still far fewer than in London – but those French north of the border are there because they want to be, not because they were sent there for work. A 2023 French newspaper article that explored this phenomenon interviewed some of those who had emigrated to Scotland. One said it reminded her of her native Brittany. Another said it was the people, who are ‘down-to-earth, friendly, proud and have a great sense of humour’, and a third explained that ‘everyone is very kind and willing to help’.
You won’t find anything in the French media about Scotland’s soaring obesity levels, one of the highest in Europe
That’s all true, of course, but there is another reason why the French simper over Scotland: Brexit. One suspects that the French who settle in Scotland come from the same class as most of their media: that is to say, the bourgeoisie. This class is overwhelmingly pro-European Union and they couldn’t hide their horror when Britain voted to leave the EU a decade ago. 62 per cent of Scots voted to Remain compared with 47 per cent in England, numbers that were widely reported in France. Those poor Scots, was the sentiment, forced into Brexit by la perfide Angleterre.
But France’s love for Scotland blinds them to its failings, of which, as the English are quick to point out, are many. You won’t find anything in the French media about Scotland’s soaring obesity levels, one of the highest in Europe. Nor does one hear a peep about the deaths from drink and drugs in Scotland, which also top European charts. Scotland has been the drugs death capital of Europe for the last seven years; there were 191 drug misuse deaths per million people in Scotland in 2024 with Estonia’s 135 deaths per million the next highest.
The Scottish education system is a shambles and in 2023 Scotland fell for the first time behind OECD averages in maths and science. Pupils trail their English peers in all subjects and a recent book, written by an Emeritus professor of education, warned that Scotland had fallen this century from above average to ‘quite mediocre’ in international education. The situation is just as dire in Scotland’s universities.Despite this, French parents continue to send their children to be educated in Scotland, among whom are acquaintances of mine. I have tried to warn them.
The French press were also negligent in reporting the recent travails of Scotland’s former First Couple, Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell. Few media outlets devoted much coverage to the extraordinary revelations about Murrell’s embezzlement over many years.
Perhaps the Auld Alliance is to blame for this blind spot. It’s hard for the French to think ill of Scottish Nationalists; after all, they dislike the English even more than they do.
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