Now for <i>entente cordiale</i>

The entente cordiale has made Britain and France, in theory at least, good neighbours for more than a century.

Now president Nicolas Sarkozy wants us to become good friends too - the sort perhaps who could stroll hand-in-hand as once envisaged by Tony Blair.

"Sarko" foresees a new entente as "amicale" by name as the meeting of his nation's and England's football teams at the Stade de France tonight.

But even in "friendly" matches, experienced players have been known to see red as historical rivalries come to the fore, so what prospects for the cosy new arrangement?

The original Entente Cordiale was a colonial-era agreement aimed at settling long-standing cross-Channel disputes and lift the shadow of centuries of conflict and rivalry.

Signed in London by British foreign secretary Lord Lansdowne and French ambassador Paul Cambon on April 8, 1904, it was a lasting achievement of the Balfour government.

It paved the way for Anglo-French diplomatic and military co-operation in the lead-up to the First World War of 1914-18, a conflict critics say it made inevitable.

But whatever its immediate practical consequences, it did little to stop the constant bickering between the French and the enemy "outre Manche".

Indeed, the longevity of the "perfidious Albion" tag underlines the feeling of acute and deep-seated distrust which many Frenchmen still harbour for Britain.

And Britons still have images of French farmers burning lorry loads of British meat burned on to their collective conscience many years on from such protests.

Suspicions were also heightened in recent years over the siting of the Sangatte refugee camp right next to the Channel Tunnel which many used as a route into the UK.

In the 1970s, Britain unilaterally blocked the building of any such under-sea link, a decade after its bid to join the Common Market had been halted by Charles de Gaulle's unequivocal "non".

The general's strained relations with Winston Churchill typified some of the frosty regard between leaders over the years, with the prime minister once observing to MPs: "The Almighty, in his infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen."

Nor did two of the nations' most prominent leaders of recent decades have all good things to say about each other, President Mitterrand once famously describing Lady Thatcher as having "the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe".

She hit back in her memoirs, painting him as an "urbane, self-conscious French intellectual, fascinated by foreign policy, bored by detail, possibly contemptuous of economics".

Despite his chastising of her as a "housewife", the PM had more time for Jacques Chirac whom she admired for saying what he meant and meaning what he said.

Mr Blair might not entirely share her admiration for a politician he once engaged in what is still talked of in Paris as "le row" and who was implacably opposed to the Iraq war.

The then PM, reportedly "beside himself with anger", asked Mr Chirac at one summit how he could defend the common agricultural policy and then claim to be a supporter of aid to Africa.

An inflamed Mr Chirac told Mr Blair he had been "very badly brought up" and that his remarks were tantamount to describing him as a demagogue and hypocrite.

Fence-mending talks were required, especially after Mr Chirac was overheard joking with other leaders that the UK's only contribution to European agriculture was mad cow disease and that "we can't trust people who have such bad food".

One of the most embarrassing climbdowns was forced on then French PM Edith Cresson after she notoriously declared that one in four British men was homosexual.

"They are certainly more reserved in their behaviour towards women than the French but each country has its traditions and culture," she clarified.

Mr Sarkozy has already shown he has a sharp tongue - he was recently caught using somewhat fruity language to dismiss a protesting farmer.

But Gordon Brown will hope to avoid any confrontations with a counterpart who sees himself as a something of a Gallic Tony Blair as they embark on a "new Franco-British brotherhood".

Mr Sarkozy has been quick to remind us that it was he, as interior minister, who eventually closed down Sangatte.

And he is keen to put flesh on the bones of the new relationship by more co-operation on immigration and other areas such as the economy, security and defence.

The president believes that the two nations can work "hand in glove" - let's just hope this time it does not turn out to be boxing gloves.