France gets alternative view of the world: An Englishman is hosting one of French television's most respected current affairs ventures, writes Julian Nundy in Paris

First Edition

ONE PROBLEM last week was to find the French for 'litmus test'. The words were used by General Lewis Mackenzie, the Canadian commander of UN troops who took over Sarajevo airport last Monday. They were broadcast by Sky News at 5am on Tuesday.

Two hours later, with French subtitles, the bulletin was on France's state-owned third television channel, FR3, followed by television news from Germany, Russia, Spain and Italy. Before each bulletin, key words in the respective languages appeared on the screen as the presenter gave the meanings. General Mackenzie's litmus test was given full literal and figurative translation.

The 'Eurojournal' is the first hour of Continentales, a two-and-a-half-hour programme of foreign television put out at breakfast time five days a week. Recorded by schools and universities, it is a venture into educational television which has the added value of showing how news and current affairs are treated abroad.

Like many television programmes, it is closely identified with its host. What sets Continentales apart is that this French television presenter is from Cornwall. Alex Taylor, 34, from Carclaze - 'A L Rowse's village' - has been living in France for 13 years except for one brief interlude. The presenter of Continentales since June 1990, six months after it went on the air, he took on the job of producer four months later, taking full responsibility for the contents.

Among the middle-class French young, Alex Taylor is something of a household name. In the eastern city of Nancy, where FR3 produces the programme, 'I am often recognised by taxi drivers. They seem to watch television at eight in the morning.'

Continentales was the idea of Michel Kuhn, a university teacher who appeared on the BBC's A Vous La France in the 1970s. He then tried to promote the concept of educational television in France. According to Mr Taylor, Germany puts out 2,600 hours of educational programmes a year, Britain 1,800 while France has only 254. Mr Kuhn set up the programme with a budget of 21m francs (2.1m), since increased by a third.

The programme's finest hour came during the Gulf War when 2.3m French viewers watched one morning. 'The other French channels were just translating CNN and interviewing French generals with maps. We showed what others were saying,' Mr Taylor says. More normally, however, the programme hopes for 400,000 to 500,000 viewers. On the TV5 Europe channel, the programme reaches from Holland to Ukraine, a potential of 26 million households. Last year, the programme won a French award for 'European initiative'.

While the news content is exclusively European, the current affairs programmes reach beyond. On Tuesday, for example, there was a Japanese report on a reunion of Second World War veterans whose ships were sunk by the US in 1945 with Vietnamese villagers who saved and sheltered them.

On other days, Continentales broadcasts an Indian programme which includes 'Spitting Image' style puppets and a French-language programme put out by Chinese television. 'That's the most controversial and the only one we censor,' says Mr Taylor. 'We cut out a piece on Tibet. Otherwise, there was a report on women in Shanghai and another on Muslims in Peking. They have pictures you simply won't get elsewhere.'

From Europe, the programme has been running the BBC's Rough Guides and Channel Four's Europe Express. Zak, an irreverent magazine from WDR Cologne, last week showed Germans who still take holidays in Yugoslavia. After distressing film of fatigued women and children from Bosnia lodged in insanitary conditions in a campsite in Croatia, Zak had footage of sunburnt Germans discussing the price of salami at another site a few miles away.

In the summer, when the Continentales team take a rest, the programmes are pre-recorded and take in a dose of light entertainment. This year, the original 1960s black-and-white version of The Avengers, known in France as Chapeau Melon et Bottes de Cuir - 'Bowler Hat and Leather Boots' - will be shown. Last summer, all the episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus were screened. After explanation of vocabulary on screen, enthusiasts can test their knowledge with a competition on Minitel, France's computer teletext system available to all telephone subscribers. Last summer, callers sometimes numbered 4,000 a day, Mr Taylor says.