I can’t help but feel that my ski holiday has been scripted straight from a film. Not just any film, mind you, but a French cult classic. If you’re not on holidays, you may as well laugh at others who are. Move over Chevy Chase, it’s National Lampoon French-style…

Learn a few lines from Les Bronzés font du ski (1979) and you’ll be the life of any French party. Watch the film in its entirety and you’ll have an unnerving feeling of holidaying in one huge ski stereotype.

Les Bronzés font du ski is the second of the three Les Bronzés films, in which the characters take on the Val d’Isère Mountains in the late 1970s height of skiing vogue when any forecasts of global warming would have been greeted with a raised bottle of coconut oil and welcomed as a prospect of a year-round golden glow tan. The first, simply entitles Les Bronzés (1978), introduces the oddball acquaintances at an Ivory Coast Club Med and satirises resort vacations.

The recent third film Les Bronzés 3: Amis pour la vie (2006) reunites the characters after a 27 year absence in which they have all immersed themselves in civil life and are older, wealthier and with a change of tastes for the luxury Prunus Resort hotel, but still the same capacity for corny jokes.

The following clip from Les Bronzés font du ski is a bit of a joke about all those mandatory requirements of a ski holiday (thou shalt eat equal to an annual consumption of cheese, ham and potatoes in one week; thou shalt indulge in some potent local firewater; thou shalt engage with eccentric mountain folk… and all surrounding décor – everything – must be wooden and kitsch).

The group is seemingly stranded at a mountain-top refuge and obliged to sample some of the hospitality offered by their impromptu hosts. Unfortunately for them, it’s a knock-your-socks-off strength eau de vie, with a frog pickled in the bottle. The liquor is shallot-flavoured with garlic added “for taste”. Even if you don’t understand French, the gag is universally comprehendible…