Asterix sends up the Brits in new film Astérix au Service de Sa Majesté (Asterix on Her Majesty's Service) reminds the French, lest they forget, that the British male always wears a bowler hat, the female tweed skirts, neither dares mention sex or any other vaguely embarrassing topic, and the whole country grinds to a halt for 5 o'clock tea. A string of other nationally well-known French actors ham up the British twang. Britain has Allo Allo, but French cinema goers have been rolling in the aisles over our attempts at speaking their lingo ever since La Grande Vadrouille (Don't Look Now ... We're Being Shot At!), a wartime comedy and the second most successful film in French history. Valerié Lemercier, actress and stand-up comedian, does a superb take of "Miss Mackintosh," a spinster who falls in love with Obelix, as usual by an ever-fatter Gérard Depardieu. The British, naturally, are the butt of most of the jokes. As he rows across the Channel, Asterix comes up with one clanger: "What do you call a good looking man in Britain?," he asks. A tourist. But the French also come in for mockery, marking a departure from one Gallic national trait: an absence of self-deprecation. When Obelix and Asterix ask their aloof British guide what the "Bretons" think of the "Gauls," his response is spot on. "We tend to think that you are arrogant, noisy, oversexed, cowardly and smelly," he sniffs. It remains to be seen whether the French get the joke, however, as cinema admissions in the Paris area were disappointingly low on Wednesday. Just 10,000 turned out by Wednesday afternoon - less than half the figure on day one for Asterix at the Olympic Games four years ago.