France’s summer smash at the cinema is set to be a comedy called The Perfects. It opens next week with an all-star cast that includes Scottish actor Alan Cumming. The Perfects are a family of con-artists who flee France to escape the police and they end up in Scotland where madcap adventures in tartan ensue. It’s further proof that France can’t get enough of Bonnie Scotland. Films, television documentaries, newspaper features and even a puff piece earlier this month on the primetime lunchtime news about a visit to the most isolated pub in Scotland. 

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Billy Connolly once famously likened Scottish folk singers to ‘singing shortbread tins’, churning out clichéd lyrics about mountains, heather and a Roamin’ in the Gloamin.’ Garbage!’, roared the Big Yin. 

As a proud half-Scot, I feel the same about a lot of what I see and read in France about Scotland. It’s all kilts, castles and crackling log fires. ‘An autumn stroll through the world of tartan,’ was the headline in Le Figaro last December. The feature described the history of tartan and kilts and also introduced readers to a French couple living in Edinburgh. They fell in love with Scotland a decade........

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