Il y a une femme française dans . . . um . . . le lab and I thought that I would try to appear cool and worldly by dropping the occasional French word into the conversation. I'd impress everyone by casually asking her the time in French as if I had accidentally slipped into my second language.

It was a good plan with just one flaw. I can't speak French. Like most British people, I was too lazy to learn it properly at school, so when I go to France I shout very loudly in English and the person to whom I'm speaking will invariably reply in English but with better grammar and pronunciation.

I spent ages trying to rack my brain for any remnant of the French I learnt. For some reason, the only French sentence that I can remember is, "N'oubliez pas ton pantalon," and, if I'm correct, it means "Don't forget your trousers." I spent a whole weekend of a holiday hanging around the male changing rooms of the local swimming pool waiting for an opportunity to use that sentence. It didn't go down all that well. In fact, it was met with frank hostility; someone's knee met with my groin and some people explained what they would do if they met me again. I haven't been back.

Determined to speak some French, I tried being regressed back to my French lessons by hypnosis. All I could remember was how James Evans used to make up stories about a small Yorkshire village with an obscene publications shop on the High Street - and that won't get you a baguette in a boulangerie.

Sitting, pondering my pathetic language skills, I found that, although all the grammar had deserted me, I still had a fairbit of vocabulary.I could name the window, door, chairs, desk, pens, pencils, even the pencil sharpener. Without the linking grammar, all I can do is point and name - I feel like a dermatologist.

I suppose this is the position with most British people, and the sooner we recognise this, the sooner we can get counselling. Abroad, the British are dermatologists.