This time last week I found myself in Paris. This wasn’t a sudden realisation, of course, I’d deliberately spent time and effort getting there on a train. What I probably mean is that I was in Paris. Through being the partner of a delightful woman who, through her work, sometimes manages to score free trips abroad to swanky hotels in return for a few sentences of gushing prose in a glossy mag, I “found myself” sitting in a suite at the Plaza Athenée, which probably translates into English as something like Athens Place, which I'm sure you'll agree sounds pretty spectacular. Despite there sadly being no decor to remind you of the Greek capital – no lumps of feta cheese, no crumbling remnants of Olympic stadia – it was truly astonishing in its luxury, and I made the most of it by reclining awkwardly in various pieces of expensive furniture, and saying “my, my, this is awfully nice, isn’t it.”

But the thing about scoring free trips to swanky hotels, is that even if the tab for the room is being picked up by someone else, the little extras are still frighteningly expensive. I don’t like ironing, but I’d rather borrow an iron than pay through the nose for hotel laundry to do a fast turnaround on a stripy shirt from H&M. A plastic bottle of Evian mineral water goes for around 59p in my local convenience store in South West London. However, from the minibar of a suite at the Plaza Athenée just off Paris’s Champs Elysee, it's a cool 10 euros. I stared wide-eyed in panic at Jenny, my girflriend, waving the price list, wondering how I would be able to afford to re-hydrate myself during the night. She rolled her eyes and gestured towards the tap in the bathroom. I carefully replaced the bottle back in the minibar, being careful not to dislodge a party sized pack of Pringles, lest it burst open and set me back a fiver.

In the evening we decided to head down to the bar before venturing out onto the town. I’d been receiving text messages from friends during the day, informing me of the continuing violence in the banlieue, or suburbs, of Paris. We decided to do our bit to quell the unrest by sitting in chic surroundings, within earshot of racing driver David Coulthard, and sipping on overpriced cocktails. The text messages continued to arrive, warning me that I was but a few miles away from full-scale rioting. These so-called friends seemed to be almost obsessed with the idea that I was going to be maimed – like they gained some kind of perverse pleasure at imagining me sitting blackened, charred and rather upset in a burnt-out Renault Megane. We shrugged off the warnings, and headed out to get the metro to Montparnasse. As we left the hotel, waiting paparazzi got several excellent shots of me and my girlfriend arguing about directions, as they waited for Cameron Diaz to arrive. So if any French listeners saw me in their gossip columns this week next to umpteen images of an aging Johnny Halliday, that’s the reason why.

We had an excellent dry Martini in a Montparnasse bar called, rather wonderfully, “Le Select”, which was once frequented by Hemingway (that’s Ernest, the writer, not Wayne, the fashion designer.) But bars frequented by Hemingway are two-a-penny in Paris, so we left fairly quickly to grab something to eat across the road, and as we left the bartender shouted “Eh! Anglais!”, helpfully reminding us of our nationality as we approached the pedestrian crossing. We looked to our left, then our right, and made it safely across the road to La Coupole, an enormous brasserie – or is it bistro – where there were long queues for a table. Jenny said some kind of password to the doorman, and we were whisked immediately to a prime table at the centre of the restaurant. I was faintly embarrassed by this, and shrugged apolegetically to a furious Parisian who was celebrating his birthday by standing in a long queue. We ordered in pathetically stilted French from the menu, not entirely sure what would arrive. Jenny had a tuna salad, with some kind of medley of seafood to follow. Unbeknownst to us, that’s not the way you do things in France, and as her main course arrived, people at the next table actually pointed and laughed at us. We were the subject of ridicule. So I urge you, listeners, next time you’re at an Aberdeen Steakhouse in London’s West End – as I know you often are – and “find yourself” sitting next to a hard-nosed French couple who order a Knickerbocker Glory to start, and some soup for their main, please, point. Point and laugh. Laugh yourself silly. It’s the polite thing to do.