Like the rest of the world, I’ve been recently reading a little about the ludicrous and anachronistic laws of the United Kingdom. If you haven’t yet ventured across them, they contain such un-profundity as permitting a pregnant woman to urinate in a policeman’s hat and the murder of Scotsmen with bow-and-arrows within York’s city walls.

‘In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store.’

You get the idea.

The day that the article was released, and subsequently emailed globally, was a day of celebrating a small victory over on this side of the channel. Well, at my place at least.

“Surely”, I argued, “surely there must be equally ridiculous French laws. You too have a system of regal ancients prone to burdensome bureaucracy. There must be SOME stupid French laws out there…”

My pleas were greeted with a nonchalant but dismissive “pfft” and we took this argument to the venerable oracle, the wise sage of all things trivial.

Google didn’t return any results in my favour.

But I’ve finally found some dubious French laws, that I think go against the very grain of French society (like the ‘mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day’ in the UK). For instance, ‘it is illegal to kiss on railways in France.’

What’s the deal with this? Commuters, up in arms, I say! Get on the next train (if it’s not a strike day) and lock lips with the nearest stranger!

At least I hope this law means ‘on the trains’, because if it’s regarding the railway tracks themselves, then I guess it’s a very practical law.

‘No pig may be addressed as Napoleon by its owner’ (lucky George Orwell wasn’t French).

And whilst the British may not die in parliament, in France ‘it is forbidden without a cemetery plot to die on the territory of the commune.’ Well that’s just inconvenient really – and how do they enforce the penalty?