This is not a sentiment I thought I would express, nor expect to again: Jacques Chirac is right.

According to the French President, “the only thing that they (the Brits) have ever done for European agriculture is ‘mad cow’ disease. You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland.”

Let’s ignore the chutzpah of a President of France criticising another country for untrustworthiness. And let’s forget the irony of his having uttered his words to the German Chancellor and the Russian President. When was the last time you craved Russian food, or felt like popping out for some German?

Painful as it is to admit, however, in all material respects, M Chirac is the full soufflé.

Predictably, the reaction to his comments has been one of affronted outrage. How typically arrogant! How typically French! British chefs have lined up to point out the vibrancy of the London restaurant scene, and how there has been a revolution in British dining in the past decade.

Indeed so. There are some wonderful places to eat now. And, at the top half of the scale, I would rather eat in creative London than stultifying Paris any day. But the operative words are “some” and “the top half”. For every Gordon Ramsay and Giorgio Locatelli, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of slop merchants, who charge a small fortune for food which is barely edible.

Set foot in an average British restaurant and you will be lucky to find a course worth eating. And it is getting steadily worse, not better. As home cooking dies, replaced with tasteless, additive-ridden, cook-chill plastic, our taste buds are losing what little discrimination they might have had. When the microwaved frozen produce of pizza and pasta chains is the height of culinary standards, as it is for many, we should hang our heads in comestible shame.

As for our native dishes, roast beef can certainly be wonderful, as can bread and butter pudding. And who is not partial to fish and chips? But the notion that staple British dishes stand comparison with French, or Italian, is simply risible.

My neighbourhood bistro in Brussels offers delicious steak, vegetables and a carafe of bordeaux for around 18 euros. Here, it would cost twice as much and be inedible. Chirac may be a byword for “wrong”. But on this one, he’s spot on.