Our Man in Paris: The world according to Starck

Is bizarre self-promotion to your taste? Take the Eurostar from the lounge at Waterloo station (designed by Philippe Starck) to the business lounge at the Gare du Nord in Paris (also designed by Philippe Starck). Go to the Centre Georges Pompidou, where the celebrated French designer – of everything from lemon-squeezers to hotels – is having his first retrospective exhibition.

This is, in Starck's own words, a "droll exhibition" because there are no exhibits. Or rather there is just one: a large, brown, shapeless shape, which resembles an enormous dog turd (and stands for the "shadow" of Starck's unconscious, creative genius).

In a circle around the portentously darkened room, there are 11 screens that show pictures of all the objects and places designed by Starck in the 36 years since he first reinvented the armchair (at the age of 18). Beneath the screens are plastic heads onto which are projected movies of the great man's face. The 11 identical Starck faces – literally talking heads – all jabber at the same time, giving different parts of a rather interesting lecture by Starck on Starck's work and genius.

Every so often, one of the heads bursts into song, to a tune popularised by Jacques Brel. "Je designe des petits trucs, des petits trucs. Des trucs de première classe. Des trucs de deuxième classe." (I design bits and bobs. First-class bits and bobs and second-class bits and bobs.")

Starck, 54, fancies himself as a dry, self-deprecating humorist. His humour is sometimes like the bottle of dry wine that was so dry that it was empty. To mark the exhibition, he also redesigned the newspaper Libération one day last week, turning it into a kind of newsprint TV screen. Each page was laid out in the same way with a band of right-on "Starckisms" – "tourism is the aftermath of colonialism"; "refuse all monopolies" – running along the bottom.

Philippe Starck is probably the best-known all-purpose designer in the world. He has turned his talent to most things, from toothbrushes to nightclubs. His stuff is not necessarily expensive. A pair of Starck sunglasses might cost you €300 (£200), which is a little steep, but you can get a pair of Starck chairs on the internet for €271 (£180).

Starck furniture is wonderful. He specialises in chairs and tables made from modern, hi-tech materials, which follow the classical lines of French 18th-century furniture. He says that the "best thing that I've ever made" is the "Chaise Louis Ghost" – a rather ethereal, transparent plastic chair, with the oval back and curved legs and arms of a fauteuil from the period of Louis XIV or XV.

This has been a bestseller – unlike the "forest" table, which Starck included in his offerings for a Trois Suisses mail-order catalogue a few years back. He designed a coffee table in the shape of a rustic picnic table. A tree branch held the table together but the branch was not included in the "kit". Buyers received a voucher entitling them to apply to their nearest French national forest for a piece of tree to complete their table.

Starck, for all his oddities, is a genius and one of the few modern French creators to be worthy of the country's creative past. The French used to be the undisputed global champions of taste and design. Which country has underground railway entrances to match the art nouveau iron-work of some of the Paris Métro stations?

Some time around the Fifties, maybe even earlier, creative confidence, and taste, drained out of the French. Most modern French buildings are appalling. (The Centre Georges Pompidou is an exception, but that was designed by the Englishman Richard Rodgers and the Italian Renzo Piano.) The suburbs of every French city resemble those of any city in New Jersey or Texas: a jungle of tasteless strip malls and neon signs.

There are some modern designs that are classically French – the TGV high-speed train, the Renault Espace people carrier – but the French creative spirit seems mostly to have drooped in contact with modernity. Starck defies that, partly by drawing inspiration from France's past.

His exhibition is maddening but worth going to all the same. He says that some visitors survive only a minute and then "run out screaming". Others last for more than two hours. I lasted about 40 minutes – and then ran out screaming.

Everyone loves Petula (or should that be Pétula?)

The great French pop idol of the 1960s, Petula Clark, has recorded in French for the first time in 25 years. A French pop idol? Surely, Ms Clark – or Madame Clark – is English?

Yes, she is, but Petula Clark is also part of a select band of British performers (Jane Birkin is another) who have been embraced by the French as one of their own. If you go into any French music shop, you will find Petula's records (my children roll on the floor when I use that archaic word) in the section reserved for French singers. French newspapers often Frenchify Ms Clark's name with an acute accent – Pétula.

Great excitement, therefore, in the French music world at the news that Pétula, now aged 70, is to bring out a bi-lingual double album next month, which will feature some of her old favourites, including her all-time blockbuster, "Downtown", but also three new songs in French.

The 1960s generation of pop stars – from Cliff Richard to Johnny Hallyday (60 this year) – is indestructible, but Petula Clark must be the longest-serving popular singer in the world. She began, aged eight, as a child entertainer for British troops, our answer to Shirley Temple, during the Second World War.

After a moderately successful career as a British pop singer in the 1950s, she married a Frenchman, Claude Wolff, moved to France, and became one of the biggest French music stars of the early 1960s – so much so that she was almost forgotten in Britain. The international success of "Downtown" in 1964 changed that. Petula, who lives in Geneva, has since performed regularly in Britain and the US (most recently as Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard). However, she mostly remains a big name in France. She must, I suppose, count as the first – and maybe the only – "European" pop singer.

Taxing times

French provincial life: Charles Valot started a late-night grocery shop in Cherbourg in 1995, which he called an "experimental laboratory in the art of food". The experimental and artistic element was, admittedly, limited: he would chat to his clients about modern art while they bought their beer, chocolate or milk.

On this basis, he charged 5.5 per cent VAT (for an artistic service) rather than 19.5 per cent (the rate due on groceries). A philistine court in Caen has just decided the "artistic value added" of Monsieur Valot's shop was "non-existent" and ordered him to pay €5,700 (£3,800) in back taxes.