Combine an EU recession with a crotch-achingly cold winter and the lack of tourists in Paris last week was not surprising. Never have I walked straight into the Musée d’Orsay, Invalides or one of the City of Light’s classy strip-clubs without standing in a slow-moving, grumbling queue. Yet this was indeed the case during a recent education trip –  me finding a city empty of foreigners or tourists. Except for the Chinese, that is.

There they were being guided around Galeries Lafayette’s Chanel section by a Mandarin-speaking French lady. Hundreds storming the shopping centres around the Opera. Taking up half the space in Pied au Couchon where they consumed enough pork trotters to make a whole Jihad terrorist force whimper.