Hull notwithstanding, quite possibly the shittest place on Earth. Widely documented in the Tricolore series - Chantal habite a La Rochelle - La Rochelle was a fishing village. Not only it a transparent shithole, it was populated by what appeared to be sex criminals and very hairy women.
"Le boucher qui travail a La Rochelle, il touche les enfants, parce que son épouse ne rase pas ses aisselles."

In 1987, no-one in France shaved their armpits. Or wore deodorant. Especially not girls. My first French exchange was marred by an organised trip to a swimming pool where there were rafts of thick, black underarm hair as far as the eye could see. The girl you'd had a crush on suddenly became the world's hairiest swamp donkey when her pits were exposed. They're catching on now, thank God. At least with the shaving, anyway.

BANGERS! BANGERS BANGERS BANGERS!!!
Other than flick-knives, 35 centime wine and porn, this was the only entertainment available on our French trip. To ensure that we didn't smuggle exposives back into Britain, the teachers announced an amnesty on bangers and collected them all as the boys got onto the bus for the last time. Foolishly, they simply threw their booty into a litterbin by the side of the road. What they hadn't considered was Hugh Gibbs arriving late and throwing a lit box of matches into the bin before embarking. Honestly, it was like the final 20 minutes of a James Bond film.

Ok, it wasn't.

In an attempt to avoid bangers being confiscated by our teachers we used to hide them in our shoes as we got back on the coach - amazingly we got away with it year after year. We once stuck a large banger in the exhaust pipe of the school caretaker's car which made a surprising mess of the back of his vehicle.

Reads so much better if you read it out of context (as I did) and visualise sausages instead. - Phil