John Hillman provides us with a sociological appreciation of that yellow stuff that is more important to the French than all the gold in the world.

What is it about cheese that sends the French into such frenzy? And what does it say about the ‘bon viveur’ attitude of a nation that they put so much effort into making something that serves little purpose other than the giving of pleasure? Good things, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Cheese is to the French what big scary guns are to Americans; part of their national raison d’être. Indeed if the French had invested as much time in their space technology as they did in their cheese making then they may have put the first man on the moon. Although in truth they probably thought about it and decided that if the moon really is made of cheese, it wasn’t going to be cheese made by a Frenchman, so why bother?

The supreme quality of cheese in France is really a gift to humanity as noble as their contributions to philosophy. Because, let’s face it, only a nation that has perfected the art of simple pleasure to such a ridiculously high level could have produced so many of the great thinkers behind the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and de Tocqueville.

The US on the other hand can be accused of having offered very little culturally beyond Hollywood and Hip-Hop, and unsurprisingly this is reflected in their cheese; bland, plastic and shifted in large quantities.

Perhaps one day a serious study will be conducted into the links between nations’ cheeses and their national characters. I’m sure you’ll agree that it represents a sizeable gap in humankind’s academic body of work.

Until that day let us at least be thankful for our near neighbours, land of 1000 cheeses and unshakeable belief in man’s noble right to the pursuit of life’s simple pleasures.

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