With Bradley Wiggins favourite to win the Tour after several days in the leader's yellow jersey, the French media have tried many covert methods to put him off and allow someone else - anyone else - to win. Sadly, Gallic shrugging failed to produce the desired effect.
Next they held Wiggo after a gruelling ride and forced him to watch a 30-minute film of French comedy. That really should have done the trick. The last good French comedy was Le Diner de Cons in 1998 and this wasn't it. It was about how no one in Britain cares about cycling. Somehow, Wiggo shrugged off the blow.
France does care about cycling though; very, very much. However, despite a good crop of promising youngsters, they haven't had a winner since 1986, making them a bit like the Huddersfield Town of cycling, which is not how they see themselves.
A Brit winning the Tour is considered to be even worse in France than an American win, so it was inevitable that there would be drug slurs. Wiggins returned a journalist's question with some good old Anglo-Saxon language that would mostly appear as asterisks on this page. The hack left with his **** between his ****.
Rival rider Vincenzo Nibali was next to take a pot shot, saying, "Wiggins looked at me at the finish and I really did not like the way he did it." The organisers hope that if Nibali tells his mummy and daddy perhaps they might send Bradley to bed without any tea.
Otherwise President Hollande will be forced to consider desperate measures. He is said to have pulled back from detonating the entire country in disgust, but should Wiggo reach Paris a champion, a name change is the preferred option. After all, the British still give them grief about Agincourt and that was 600 years ago.
Copyright : Comedy Central UK