Alex Duval Smith: Our woman in Paris

Tony Blair's spat with President Jacques Chirac in Brussels seems to have blown over, until the next time. But even as Chirac was cursing the Prime Minister's "insolence" over farming subsidies, another French politician was going beyond the call of duty to salve Anglo-French relations, in the company of an actress.

The event was a ceremony at the Quai d'Orsay last Tuesday evening in honour of Charlotte Rampling. The 56-year-old actress, who has lived in France for more than 25 years, went along to pick up her Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur medal (she is already an OBE). Ms Rampling, whose films include The Verdict with Paul Newman and The Night Porter with Dirk Bogarde, was expecting little more than an aperitif and some nibbles.

She met with a declaration of love from the foreign minister Dominique de Villepin: "To those of you who would say to me that Charlotte Rampling is foreign, I would reply, 'Yes! Yes! She is foreign, just as beauty can be strangely foreign. She is a famous, fascinating, familiar yet solitary woman. She is foreign in the way of those who shun mirrors, who stay out of the wind, to protect another exist- ence. Your eyelids, Madame, define the threshold between dreams and life, absence and revelation.

"Yes, you are from here and from elsewhere. From one life and all lives, fired by a flame that pushes back the boundaries of death. And by your grace, life to us seems more troubling but also richer and more real (...) That is what unites us and our two strange vocations. For on the screens of dreams as on those of the world, it is necessary to wrench from the howling storms, from the exploding conflicts, fragments of truth and beams of light."

Listing Rampling's attributes in several films, De Villepin said that she had been "ambiguous" for Sidney Lumet, "manipulative" for Jacques Deray and "dark" for Alan Parker. "Each of these qualities is you. You are honest with yourself because you only take roles you believe in. And when we watch you, we are on the verge of tears."

He said that she was a true European who could "1,000 times have chosen Hollywood but you set down roots in France. You are one of Woody Allen's favourite actresses. On the set of Stardust Memories, he referred to you and Marie-Christine Barrault as 'my French girls'. Englishwoman of France, you are here, with us", concluded the minister.

Now, Ms Rampling is used to this kind of thing. She has more than once been voted among the sexiest women in the world, and her album, Comme Une Femme, consists of 13 songs written for her by Michel Rivgauche, composer of one of Edith Piaf's best-known songs, La Foule (The Crowd). When she launched the CD earlier this year, she said that it spoke of the feminine condition – "volcanic, ever-changing, rarely understood by men".

But last week, even Ms Rampling was stunned. "I'm a bit speechless, actually," she said after listening to De Villepin. So thrown was she that all she could come up with was a pre-prepared acceptance phrase that sounded embarrassingly dispassionate: "I do not think that Napoleon imagined, when he created the Légion d'honneur, that it would one day be given to an English actress by a French minister."

The curious controversy of the parrot and the politicians

A work of art that consists of a cassette recorder, two palm trees, a cage and a live parrot is to be bought by Paris's Museum of Modern Art for €210,000 (£125,000) after a heated debate that took place last week on the city council.

But the politicians did not spend hours debating the welfare of the red-tailed Gabonese parrot featured in Marcel Broodthaer's installation. Rather, debate at the City Hall centred entirely on the issue of whether it was proper for councillors to potentially overrule the curators of museums.

"As soon as politicians get involved in artistic decisions, it's an open door to fascism,'' said Christophe Girard, the socialist assistant mayor for cultural affairs who installed a wooden parrot on his desk for the duration of the debate. Right-winger Jacques Toubon said that it was unacceptable for politicians to try to replace art professionals, while Patrick Bloche, the leader of the socialist group, said opposing the purchase of the artwork would be tantamount to "artistic censorship''.

As for the welfare of the parrot, which has sat in the cage ever since the Belgian artist put it there in 1974, none of the politicians seemed concerned. Red-tailed parrots can live for more than 40 years, so there may actually be no need for concern for another decade. But it still seems churlish to overlook the bird's welfare. The artist, meanwhile, a well-known Belgian conceptualist, died just two years after incarcerating the parrot, and his thoughts on its fate appear to be unrecorded.

The work, called Don't Say What I Didn't Say, The Parrot, will go on display next year in the Museum of Modern Art. It features the voice of the artist incanting "I say, I say, I say". The parrot barely manages to get a word in edgeways.

The controversy reached the Radio 4 arts programme Front Row, but there it was the basis for a "humorous" sketch in the style of the legendary Monty Python dead parrot episode. How very English.

Adults brought to book

Antoine Guillemain is just 15 years old but the spellbound French boy considers it his mission to entice more adults to read the Harry Potter books.

"Grown-ups seem more predisposed to understanding the complexity of the stories," says Guillemain in a very grown-up way. "To suggest anything else is, in my opinion, a grave error." The Rouen schoolboy, whose pen name is Romulus Cornedrue, was conducting an interview to launch his book, Mon Pote Harry Potter (My Mate Harry Potter).

The book, published this week, is a thorough guide to the JK Rowling books, with biographies of characters, statistics, trivia, a sorcerer's glossary and a survey of internet links and merchandising. One wonders when Guillemain finds time for his school work...

Indy, the newshound

Loyalty is a friend called Indy. Just ask the French interior minister, Nicholas Sarkozy, best known for his tough talk on crime and derogatory remarks about gypsies. But The Independent can now exclusively reveal that Sarkozy must be a softie because he has named his golden labrador after this newspaper.

"I think that you are overstepping the mark there," said an aide in Sarkozy's office, who also refused to confirm what newspaper Indy likes to carry between his jaws. But we know.