Wish you were here, sur le plage de Camber
By David Sapsted
(Filed: 11/05/2005)

Hi-De-Hi collided with 'Allo, 'Allo yesterday as several hundred striking French surgeons sought refuge in the unlikely surroundings of an English seaside holiday camp.

Christian Leonardi, Michel Lenom and Joe Asencio take a break from discussing ‘technocratic reforms’

It was hard to tell for whom the cultural shock was greater - the French, who bowled up at a Pontin's on the fringes of Romney Marsh on the South Coast, or the few locals who were confronted with a pre-season invasion of middle-aged, foreign-speaking, mostly male visitors who swept in on a fleet of coaches from the Eurostar station at Ashford.

There were meant to be 750 of them but, in the event, 300 turned up at the Gare du Nord for the train chartered for Operation Manche II.

The original Operation Manche did not happen last year because, at the last moment, the French government did a deal on the surgeons' grievances over (comparatively) low pay, long hours and sky-rocketing liability insurance premiums.

According to the surgeons, they went on strike this time because the government had not honoured commitments made then. And they chose Camber because it was close to Ashford and they got a good rate for a group booking.

	The French arrive at Pontin's, which offered ‘a good group rate’

But why cross the Channel at all? "We have so many strikes in France that we thought we would get more coverage in the media if we went into exile in England," explained one with disarming frankness.

Thus, they emerged from their charabancs under louring skies, looking half-amused, half-bemused by the uniform accommodation blocks and the staff's blue and gold shell suits.

One visitor cast a glance at the 1968-built camp and then, greeted by the enormous plastic octopus that bestrides the reception area, muttered "formidable" in a dark, Gallic and not entirely complimentary sort of way.

Some seemed at a loss to appreciate the social significance of the camp's Queen Vic pub, while others - owing to a schoolboy error in French on the part of a Daily Telegraph reporter - got the impression that English holiday camps were famous for their nobbly nose competitions.

	The uniform accomodation at Pontin's left the surgeons looking both amused and bemused

Just across the road from the camp lies the dune-backed beach that makes Camber famous. It is splendid in a very sandy, very northern France sort of way that must have made the Normans feel quite at home when they pitched up just along the Sussex coast 1,000 years back.

Indeed, it is so sandy that, in the Sixties, they filmed the British classic Carry On - Follow That Camel in Camber with the dunes proving a dead ringer for the Sahara Desert.

The beach has the added advantage for non-swimmers that, at low tide, you can walk into the Channel for miles and stand very little danger of getting your derrière wet.

But Philippe Cuq, the president of the Surgeons of France union, insisted that he and his colleagues would not have time for such flippant pursuits while in Camber and had come to take part in a series of workshops on technical matters, rather than to have fun at the seaside.

Which is just as well as the surgeons, who are staying until Friday, have already missed last Saturday's West Virginia Country and Western Club bash at the village hall ("No bar - sorry, no line dancing," warned the posters) and the mods' scooter rally is not until July. There is not much else in Camber and, to make matters worse, the local Londis does not stock Gaulloises.

"We have a lot of work to do," said Marc Richer, a vascular surgeon from Le Mans. "We shall be working to clarify some very technocratic reforms." Then he added with a smile: "But we will try to have some beer, too."

At least Jean-Christian Bideaux, a surgeon from Perignan, had brought his guitar, although he would play it only in his chalet, he said.

Just as well, as he confessed that he did not know a single Chas and Dave number.

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