Paris On Air

by Oliver Gee

  Anyway, now I was in Paris and thinking of ways to give the podcast a bigger following. I had no budget, which by now should be such a familiar plot point to you that I hardly need to mention it anymore. Essentially, I was thinking of ways to promote my show for free. I reflected on the viral video I’d done in Sweden, the one about the sharp intake of breath to say “yes”. If millions of people would watch a video about that language oddity, then surely I could recreate something similar in France. But in Sweden, I’d had the luxury of a camera operator, an editorial team, and a video editor. Now I only had myself, an iPhone, and a girlfriend. If I was going to do a video, it would have to be with the minimum amount of equipment and technical expertise possible.

  While I couldn’t think of a language quirk that would match the one in the Swedish video, I suppose I inadvertently took inspiration from my own mum and filmed a short clip about how to fake a French accent. I mulled over the script for a week or two until I had perfected it, then waited for a day with blue skies to film it. And one brisk day while passing the Eiffel Tower on foot, I decided it was go time. Lina held the camera and I spoke for 67 seconds - all in one take (so I wouldn’t have to edit it afterwards). This is what I said, more or less word for word.

  “OK guys, here’s how to imitate a French person in four steps, even if you can’t speak French.

  Imitate a horse. Purse your lips gently and exhale hard. It helps to lift your shoulders and look confused.

  Imitate a monk. You know that humming hymn-like noise? Eurgh.. Do that whenever you’re lost for a word or need to fill a gap.

  Learn a few Paris Metro station names and say them regularly. Barbès Rochechouart, Jaurès, and Sentier are some particularly good ones to start with.

  Most importantly, learn the French swear word putain (and say it often).

  Then you just mix all four of these together and you’re faking French. It should sound something like this:

  Ah oui eurgh putain... Barbès Rochechouart eurgh… Sentier putain eurrrgh.”

  That was it. Now, while that last sentence might not look particularly French to you, if you say it out loud with just enough of a lilt to your voice then I can guarantee anyone near you will say “By God I didn’t know you spoke French”. Try it!

  OK maybe not, but one thing I do know is that there was a truth to my observations, because when I uploaded the clip to Facebook all hell broke loose. The views instantly started to rack up. You know you’re onto something when the first thousand come quickly. Remember, at this time I didn’t have a strong following online; the show was still quite new. But people were finding this video and they were sharing it. While the views kept racking up, the shares were flying at an unheard of rate, for me at least. 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 shares. If you consider that was just the number of people sharing it, imagine how high the view count was! It was unbelievable. It had worked! Sixty-seven seconds of me faking a French accent was getting passed around online quicker than I could keep up with it. I started getting messages from friends in Paris and around the world who’d found the video. French people were extremely vocal with their thoughts on the imitation, and most seemed to find it pretty spot on.

  By the end of the day I had to turn off all notifications from Facebook because it was getting shared so much. Before that day, I’d taken great pleasure to read every comment that anyone had ever left. Heck, I even responded to them all. And I did it on this video too, but only for the first ten comments or so. After that it was madness. The view just kept soaring. 100,000, 200,000, 500,000 hits. It was around this point that other pages started downloading it to their computers then reuploading it to their own channels. I started to see it popping up everywhere as people started sharing their pirated versions, some with subtitles for foreign languages. Yes, it burned too fast and it got away from me. I’d predicted this might happen so I added text to the video mentioning The Earful Tower, and I’m glad I did. As my video reached the 1 million view mark on Facebook, I saw that other versions of my video were flying even higher. One of them is up at 4.5 million hits as I write this. But that’s fine, it was all just spreading the message. The original version of my video plateaued at around one million hits, which I considered to be astronomical. I can’t even guess how many people have seen it in total. Ten million? More? Who knows.

  All I really cared about was that the idea had worked. People who liked what they had seen were now following my Facebook page and I’ve never had a boost like it since. On a budget of zero euros I’d reached millions. When the dust settled, I was left with around 10,000 Facebook followers. To this day I still meet people who recognize me from that video. I’ve even had a few people quote it to me. An older American guy once crossed the room at an event to speak to me, then said “Barbes Rochechouart eurrrrrghh” before walking off without another word.

  As lovely as it was to have a new following, the show was just like the vast majority of other blogs and podcasts out there in that it still brought in nearly no money. In fact, it was actually costing me, considering the hosting fees and the website charges. Still, I figured if I could make millions of people watch something, surely I could make a living out of it.

  But how?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A proposal, teaching at university, and World Cup pandemonium.

  7.1 The podcast

  The new podcasting studio was in another chambre de bonne - a tiny maid’s quarters - on rue Lafayette near the Gare du Nord train station. Of course, there was no elevator, so that meant trudging up six flights of steps, often with a guest in tow. And if I thought my first apartment was petite, this one took first prize. I feel sorry for any maid who lived in it. It was a square room, the length of a pool table, though it did have a nice little view. There was a table in the middle with a few microphones facing the chairs, a small desk to one side, and a mini fridge in the corner. And it did the trick perfectly. Imagine, a radio studio in the heart of Paris, broadcasting to the world from under the rooftops.

  I did weekly episodes with special guests, and I was getting to meet some interesting faces from the Paris scene. I’d started with bloggers, food writers, YouTubers, and authors, and moved on to comedians, actors, and tour guides. I talked to cafe owners, chefs, priests, photographers, TV stars, ambassadors, and mayors. If someone had something to say about life in France, I was there to listen. As all of these people shared their podcast appearances with their own fans, the show gained new followers; and it was encouraging to see the downloads grow.

  I spent so much time in the studio that the radio station eventually gave me my own key. I could use the space whenever I wanted. I taught myself more about the production side of things; how best to edit audio, and surprised myself by enjoying it. Editing audio is like being able to speak a secret language. If you wear headphones and edit in public, like on a plane or in a cafe, then the person next to you can watch your every move and have no idea what you’re doing. All they see are the squiggly lines, like a heart monitor.

  But what was I actually editing on the shows? The truth is: not much. One of the joys of recording the podcast episodes was that I did it like it was live. If a neighbour started drilling, if an alarm went off in the distance, if someone walked into the studio - and all that has happened - then I just rolled with it and left it in the final recording. This was partly because I liked the flow of a live show and thought it was more authentic. But also because it made for less editing work. And people seemed to like it. I’d get emails from nostalgic travellers who felt they were in Paris again when they heard a siren in the background and thought, even for the briefest of moments, that the siren was outside their own window. I was learning that if I couldn’t bring these Francophiles to Paris, at least I could bring Paris to them.

  All the while, the emails continued to pour in. One woman said she’d been inspired to move to Paris after listening to the show (and apparently she did!). There were little grou
ps of listeners in pockets around the world who’d meet to discuss recent episodes, guests, and their own dreams of Paris.

  It was around this point that I considered getting sponsorships, but I had no idea how to do it. I’d never worked in sales and marketing, I was unorganized, and I didn’t know where to start. But, as fortune would have it, an email dropped into my inbox with an opportunity for a new experience and the chance to pay off a few bills.

  7.2 The teacher

  When you move to a new country, the three-year mark is an achievement that grants you access to an elite club. It’s impressive to newer expats and even to French people. It’s almost like you can be taken more seriously, because you’ve served your time, and you’ve earned some respect. In any case, on the day of my three-year anniversary in France, I got an email from a professor at the American University of Paris.

  “Oliver, would you be interested in teaching podcasting to undergrads as a side gig?” he wrote. “Maybe we can go for a coffee and a chat?”

  I met the professor soon after on the Left Bank in a little cafe of his choice, not far from the university and in the Eiffel Tower’s shadow. He ordered café crèmes for both of us and dipped his croissant into the coffee as he spoke. He was obviously a lifer; only the French dunk their pastries in coffee. I dunked mine too, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and put the disgusting wet pastry into my mouth.

  “Why’s everyone obsessed with the Right Bank these days? Those fuckers have no idea. What, there’s a few new coffee shops? There’s nothing over there that the Left Bank can’t offer,” he said.

  I had been about to mention how pleasant it was for me to have ventured across the river for a change. I kept quiet.

  “I saw you did a whole episode about the Left Bank,” he said. “Good, good. Anyway, I’ll cut the bullshit. Podcasting is the new side of journalism, right? So our journalism students need to learn it, yes? And you can teach them, right? If so, come next Thursday.”

  That was it. We organized the rest over email, and as I scooted to the safety of the Right Bank, I wondered what had happened.

  I taught a few different groups of students over the coming months. They were doing degrees in anthropology, journalism, and sociology, and their professors wanted to keep up with the online world. I taught the students how to record audio, edit it, add sound effects, and clip it all together into a short “podcast”. The results were usually impressive and it felt good to pass on some of the lessons I’d learned.

  But while I enjoyed teaching, nothing could beat the scooter drive to the university. I’ll go out on a limb and say it was the best scooter commute in the world. Imagine this: I started in the 11th arrondissement, headed down past the Place de la République and the towering statue of Marianne, the symbol of France. Then I ducked left, passed alongside the colourful Pompidou museum of modern art; then zipped across the Seine River with the Notre Dame cathedral to my left. When I reached the Left Bank, I turned right and followed the Seine almost all the way to the Eiffel Tower, passing the Musée d’Orsay, which was once a train station and now is home to a world-class art collection. I also passed between the gold dome of the Invalides and the extravagant Pont Alexandre III bridge. As the Eiffel Tower got closer, I swung left, parked the bike, and taught the students, while still on a Paris high from that glorious ride. And to think that just a year earlier I’d have taken the Metro.

  7.3 Smile!

  People warn you that you shouldn’t smile in Paris. What nonsense. Don’t listen to those miserable people. Listen to me instead. You should smile in Paris. You should smile everywhere, too, not just here. Haven’t they done studies that smiling in general makes you happier? Why not smile now? Right now? Maybe have a little chuckle so the person near you wonders what you’re reading. Go on, really sell the chuckle. They’ll probably ask about this story. Show them the cover. Tell them about the book. Heck, maybe even get them to subscribe to the podcast.

  Did you do it? Or are you alone in a room? Doesn’t matter, smile anyway. There, now you’re feeling better, aren’t you?

  Anyway, the point is that people are ultra friendly in Paris if you walk in with a smile. I’m talking about shopkeepers, cafe owners, waiters, bartenders, bankers - those kinds of people. No need to smile on the Metro or the street, or wherever you don’t feel like getting unwanted attention. I’ve found that starting an interaction with a smile will open all kinds of doors in Paris. I had Caroline de Maigret on my show once, the supermodel who wrote “How to be Parisian Wherever You Are”, and she was smiling the whole time. She even smiled in a photo I took with her after the recording. On the show she said: “Smile and talk nicely and people will be nice. You should smile in life. I want to be living in a world where people are actually nice and smile and try to be good to each other. That’s the world I want to live in”.

  So where did this myth come from that Parisians don’t smile? Who cares? The point is, you should ignore it. Instead, here’s my little tip if you want to make a Parisian smile back at you. Now this only really works if you speak a tiny bit of French (and not too much, mind you).

  You go into the shop or cafe, smile at the person, and when they say bonjour, you respond with “Bonjour, ça va?”, meaning, “Hello, how are you?” Any Parisians reading this will scoff, as will most French people in general, because it’s absolutely not done in France. French people never ask strangers how they’re going. What a waste of time! And they don’t care either. And to be fair, why would you care?

  But that’s the whole point. I know this is true, and yet I’m doing it still, on purpose. You see, ça va, these two little words and four letters, are playing an enormous role in setting the scene and putting you in it.

  All in the space of one second, you’ve made it clear that you’re a foreigner. You’ve also shown that you’re a friendly foreigner, a smiling, friendly foreigner. Yes, you’re a foreigner who is breaking the code of never asking strangers how they’re going, but you’re also making an effort to speak French. And no matter how good your French accent is, they’ll also glean that you’re still learning; because no fluent French speaker would go around saying “ça va” to strangers.

  Like I said, there’s a lot going on here. But I’d wager that four times out of five, they’ll roll with you and smile too. Hey, they might even ask you where you’re from. Once I said ça va and the monsieur concluded that I was Canadian, since I was being way too friendly for a Frenchman. They’ll often laugh too; at least they do with me, because for some reason it’s such an unusual situation in France to ask someone you don’t know “How are you?” that it’s downright funny. So, if you’re feeling plucky and fancy a conversation, this is perhaps the best way to start it. It’s a guaranteed smile.

  If you enjoyed that tip, I’ve got one more for you. People in France will affectionately joke that someone who can’t speak the local lingo “speaks French like a Spanish cow” (Comme une vache espagnole). I’ve no idea what a Spanish cow has done to deserve this little simile, but I do know that it’s a great gateway into a conversation. Instead of saying “I don’t speak French” or “My French isn’t very good”, do as I do and say Je parle française comme une vache australienne (“I speak French like an Australian cow”). You see what I did there? I switched ‘Spanish’ to the much more personally relevant ‘Australian’. It works wonders. It’ll loosen the mood, let them know you’re not a fluent French speaker, let them know you have a sense of humour, and even let them know where you’re from. Try it! All you need to remember is to change australienne to wherever you’re from. Perhaps you’re a vache americaine, or anglaise, or peruvienne. Wherever you’re from, just remember to make the nationality feminine to match the cow (even if you’re a man). Although, to be completely fair, if you’re saying you speak French like an American cow then it might even sell it better to get the cow’s gender mixed up.

  The point with all this is that
whoever started this story about not smiling in France is some miserable old cow with no sense of humour. Don’t be like that person. Be a happy cow and smile about it.

  Yes, smile and the French will smile with you.

  7.4 The proposal

  It was somewhere around this point that I proposed to Lina. Life with her was too wonderful, so I bought a ring, hid it in my pocket, then proposed to her on a rainy night in Paris. Right in the middle of the bridge by the Louvre. You already know this story, remember? It was at the beginning of the book. It was quite a special night, even besides the engagement. We’d decided to tie in John Baxter’s birthday party with cocktails at the Ritz, which had been a Christmas present from my parents. It turned out to be one of the most memorable nights of our lives. The Ritz bar, where we headed after the proposal, was impressive too. We didn’t bother telling the staff that we’d just gotten engaged, instead we enjoyed the wildly expensive cocktails with glowing smiles on our faces. Then, as we left, we called our families to share the news, and there were tears of joy from Australia to Sweden.

  When I later told Baxter about the proposal, the bridge, the rain, and the Ritz, he said it should be the first chapter of this very book. Good thinking, John! There was no denying it, we were in love. (Me and Lina, of course, not me and Baxter. Baxter and I were just friends.) But as for Lina, well I proposed to her in December and we decided to get married in July, in Sweden. Sure, six months isn’t a very long engagement but why wait?

  We had initially planned to have a small ceremony in a French chateau after the fun of my 30th birthday party, but the more we looked into the logistics of getting married in France, the more we shied away from it. If I thought the admin for getting a new bank account was difficult, imagine the paperwork for two foreigners to get married. After some deliberation - where does an Australian marry a Swede, anyway? - we decided that it would be easiest to tie the knot in Sweden. Lina’s parents offered their back garden for the reception, in a small village called Mariefred outside of Stockholm, and that was that. We settled on a date, invited friends from around the world, and we booked a church for the ceremony.