Why I never went on school foreign exchanges This may sound pretty poor, coming from someone who makes a living out of writing about foreign affairs, and whose livelihood effectively depends on his fellow human beings taking an interest in foreign cultures. But while I am as much exercised by the onset of elf 'n safety culture as le next homme, the demise of l'exchange culturel is not something I am going to cry too many tears for. Not because I don't like the French: indeed these days, I find them to be sophisticated, charming and friendly. It's just at the age of 14, they are anything but. No, at that age, the average French youngster is gawky, spotty, of bad dress sense and personal hygeine, and painfully shy with strangers. In other words, exactly the same as most British kids of the same age. So why on earth pair the two together? That certainly, was the view I took at my school in Edinburgh in 1983, when members of class G3 were asked if they wished to go on an exchange trip with their peers at a school in Geneva. Given that my mother was actually a French and German teacher, there was some gentle pressure to go. A summer in Paris? Non, merci But in my 14-year-old self, the prospect brought out a youthful xenophobia that would have shamed a hardline Ukip supporter. What if the food was horrible (which being French, it would be)? What if my fellow exchange student was weird (which, being French, he would be)? And what if 'he' turned out to be a girl? And an ugly one at that? Quelle horreur! Luckily, my mother - perhaps, herself, not relishing the prospect of looking after a surly French equivalent of me - relented in the end. And so it was that class G3 went off without me - enjoying the usual Brit kids-in-France activities of getting drunk occasionally, learning very little, and then returning with bags full of flick knives, CS gas, knuckledusters and other contraband not available in Britain. By all accounts, they had a great time. However, my gut doubts about French kids were proved right when a fellow pupil told me that his own exchange pal - another boy - had made secret audio tape recordings of him going to the loo at his house in Geneva, which he then played back to him with great glee. Quite why this was remains a mystery, but when I gleefully conveyed this information to my mother, she did appear glad that I'd dug my heels in in the first place. Hmm... wish I was back in England. Indeed, such was my aversion to the prospect of language exchanges that I likewise turned down the chance of doing at the age of 17, when the prospect a fortnight with a French girl my own age might have seemed rather more interesting. But to this day, I maintain that exchanges at ages much younger than that are not une bonne idee. After all, there is enough of a cultural gap between us and the French at the best time of times. Surely, expecting us to bridge that gap aged 14, when most adolescents are at their spikiest and most introverted, is er.. whatever the French for "daft" is.