THE interpreter to President Chirac of France is a Blackburn Rovers supporter. His grandfather, Cyril Tyson, played for Rovers in the 1930s - or so the interpreter told me.

And, no, it's not a wind-up, it's true. If you met this man in any pub in Blackburn you would think he came from East Lancashire - he's called Manuel Malherbe.

Manuel has been with the President this week for Her Majesty the Queen's State Visit, where I have also been. As I explained in a column in December, when the Queen travels on a State Visit, the Foreign Secretary accompanies her.

This trip has gone very well so far (I write on a plane, again, this time on the way from Paris to Toulouse) but any major engagement with France is bound to lead to acres of newsprint devoted to examining the nature of the relationship between our two countries.

The rivalry, the very different perspectives on our shared history, goes very deep. We were all treated to some of this at the Arsenal game at Ewood Park.

"Wellington would turn in his grave," yelled one of my neighbours in the Blackburn end at the French team in Arsenal shirts.

The complexity of view about France and Britain is hardly surprising. We are similar in size, each with a global reach, similar economies and a colonial past.

The last direct military engagement against each other we had was at Waterloo in 1815. But we spent the rest of the nineteenth century fighting proxy wars in the so-called scramble for Africa.

Today, April 8, but in 1904 not 2004, the French and British governments sought to end the rivalry with the signature in London of the Entente Cordiale. This paved the way for the alliance with France over two world wars.

This alliance endured during the ill-fated Suez adventure in 1956 and more recently British troops have worked - and fought - alongside the French in the Balkans, first Gulf War in 1991, Afghanistan and Central Africa.

Indeed, the recent military action in Iraq, in which France has famously not participated, is the exception, not the rule.

We sometimes have some well advertised arguments with the French. But I often feel these are like arguments within a family.

And interpreter Manuel is a prime example of this complicated French-British family. He's highly professional, totally trusted by France's Head of State, he's 100 per cent French - and yet looks and sounds like someone from East Lancashire.