Our Man in Paris: It's not easy in Paris to Shake, Rattle and Roll

I know nothing about classical music, but the quality and panache of Sir Simon Rattle impressed even someone as ignorant as me on his first appearance in Paris as the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Well-heeled Parisians were anxiously soliciting for spare tickets outside the auditorium. After his performance of Mahler's fifth symphony, Sir Simon received a rhythmic standing ovation, despite making a ghastly blunder right at the beginning.

I thought that the Great Man had accidentally bashed one of the cellists' music stands with his baton; my wife thought that he had kicked his podium. Either way, he produced a jarring boom, which sounded more like the opening of a heavy metal number than Mahler.

This was not Sir Simon's fault. The stage of the Salle Pleyel, where the concert was held, was too small for the world's most celebrated orchestra. The rear-most violinist on either side looked to be in constant danger of falling into the audience. Immediately after the show, the shabby, modestly sized Salle Pleyel was closed down for two years for renovations.

Paris has an inexhaustible wealth of museums, galleries, cinemas and theatres, and two opera houses, but has no large, publicly owned concert hall. There is no Parisian equivalent of the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall or the Barbican. With the temporary closure of the privately owned Salle Pleyel, the French capital will have no large concert hall at all until 2004.

No other capital city in the developed world is musically so bereft. L'Orchestre de Paris, which used to be based at the Pleyel, has been obliged to move into the small Théatre Mogador, which specialises in operettas. "If this was happening abroad, how we would laugh," the newspaper Le Figaro complained recently.

Considering the number of "grands travaux" (great works) completed in or near Paris in recent years – the Bastille opera house, the new national library, extensions to the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Stade de France – it is surprising that no French government has plugged this obvious gap in the capital's cultural armour. A succession of presidents has been ostentatiously interested in the arts but none, it seems, has cared much about music. Georges Pompidou was fond of modern art (hence the Pompidou Centre). François Mitterrand was a lover of literature and painting (hence the new library on the Left Bank, the Louvre pyramid and the Musée d'Orsay). Jacques Chirac loves oriental and primitive art and has pushed for the creation of a primitive-art museum in Paris.

The French composer Pierre Boulez has been complaining for years about the lack of a large concert hall in Paris. On his prompting, the last government revived a plan to create a Barbican-type complex for musical performances at La Villette, in the north-east of Paris. With the change in government and increasing budgetary problems, the plan has been quietly dropped.

Even the future of the Salle Pleyel – built in the 1920s, rebuilt in the 1970s, but neglected for many years – remains controversial. It was flogged off cheap by the then-struggling bank Crédit Lyonnais four years ago. There was great annoyance among Parisian music-lovers that neither the state nor the city of Paris stepped in to buy it. Instead it was sold to a private company, which promises to restore its faded glory and develop the musical mecca that Paris needs. However, the company is being rather secretive about its precise plans.

There are rumours that the state intends to buy the Pleyel, probably at a much higher price than it would have paid in 1998. That would still leave Paris trailing London in the symphonic score by three to one.

Mozart once said: "Where music is concerned, the French are, and always will be, asses." The warm reception given to Sir Simon Rattle suggests that he was not entirely right.

How Justine the cow spelt success for France's top cartoonist

France is blessed with an outstanding generation of cartoonists. One of my favourites is René Pétillon, a specialist in deadpan humour and sublimely expressive noses, who draws for the satirical newspaper, Le Canard Enchainé.

The other day Pétillon, 56, was given the prize for humour vache (literally cow humour) at the annual cartoon festival in the village of Saint-Just-le-Martel, near Limoges. Humour vache means jokes that are malicious but not too malicious, and affectionate but not too affectionate.

The cartoonist's prize was a cow called Justine. Since I know Pétillon a little, I rang him up to find out how Justine had taken to living in his apartment in Paris.

"Justine is a beautiful large, red, friendly animal, with very soulful eyes," Pétillon said. "She is already used to cities because she once visited the second floor of the Eiffel Tower, for a publicity stunt. However, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, she is not living with me. She is awarded to a different cartoonist each year but remains on her farm in Limousin."

Petillon is one of a score of French cartoonists invited to a reception this week to meet some of the 95 cartoonists from around the world whose work is being exhibited at the museum of contemporary history in Les Invalides in Paris. The exhibition, organised by the excellent French magazine Courrier International, lasts until 7 December. Meanwhile, here, courtesy of Pétillon, is an Independent scoop: the first example of his work to be published in Britain.

The price of money

My collection of euros now extends to 69 of the 96 coins minted by the countries in Euroland. Mock me if you will (everyone else does), but the value of complete national sets of euro coins is surging.

A full set of Italian coins with a face value of €3.88 now fetches €15 on the French coin market. The Finnish coins, rare except, presumably, in Finland, might fetch €20 or €30. A set of the collectors' coins goes for €1,300.

Calamity almost befell my collection recently. My 12-year-old son came to the office to have lunch with me. I had forgotten he was coming. To punish me for not being there, he started taking his lunch money from my precious euros, including my solitary Finnish coin. My assistant screamed at him just in time.