John Walsh: btw

They order these things differently in France. M. Sarkozy is the first French President to divorce his wife while in power. No American President has, I believe, done so, and you have to go back to Augustus FitzRoy, third Duke of Grafton, to find a British Prime Minister doing such a thing, in 1768. But no other head of state anywhere married a woman he once married to another man (in the sense of officiating at their wedding as Mayor.) And surely no other President, even a French one, was as precieux as M. Sarkozy when it comes to singing the praises of his meilleur demi. "Cecilia is my wife, she is part of me," he wrote in Testimony, his autobiography. "C. I write C because even today, nearly 20 years after our first meeting, to pronounce her first name still moves me." Mind you, pronouncing her last name was also bothersome. It was Ciganer-Albeniz.

* The Guy Fawkes bonfire is the latest victim of the anti-smoke culture. In Slough, the local council has launched a "Cleaner, Safer, Greener Slough" campaign, to make people think responsibly about the environment. Having done so, they've cancelled the bonfire that was to have graced their 5 November celebrations, arguing it would be "hypocritical" to have a clean-air campaign and a lot of dirty smoke. They cancelled it last year as well, replacing it with a trampoline act, which, let's face it, isn't the same. This year they'll have fireworks, but next year will doubtless substitute some coloured ribbons on string. A spokesman said: "There is a lot that goes into the fire. It takes a lot of time to burn and it all goes up into the air." These people miss nothing, do they?

* Mainstream culture is alive and well in Italy. The grooviest cats in Roman and Milanese clubs are digging a new sound – the mesmerising vocal stylings of, er, Dante Alighieri. The stern-faced author of Commedia may have been dead since 1321, but young audiences are going crazy for recitals of his work in the cleverly named Disco Inferno. It's a touring show masterminded by a DJ, Alessio Bertallot, and an actress, Lucilla Giagnoni, who declaims bits of Inferno against a jazz-techno backing. "The poetry is great for shouting out loud," said Ms Giagnoni. Somehow I cannot see a British version catching on over here, even using the words of Mr Andrew Motion.

* The newly updated OED informs us that they've found the origin of "loo", the middle-class word for "toilet". Apparently, they've tracked it back to 1936 and a letter from Lady Diana Cooper to her husband, informing him that every room in her Moroccan hotel room had a "lu-lu a cote." This is the origin? Nonsense. Every schoolkid knows the word comes from "Gardyloo!" which rough London landladies in the 18th century would yell to passers-by in the street, when hurling the contents of chamber pots out the window. (It's a corruption of Gardez l'eau! or "Watch out for the water!") Hence the water closet, or l'eau cabinet, shorted to loo. Simple. Indeed, fundamental.