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More or Less

Is London France’s sixth largest city?

More or Less

BBC

News Commentary, Science, Mathematics, News

4.63.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2014

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are there really be 300,000 French people in London and would they really want to leave France for the UK anyway? The Mayor of London, British journalists and commentators have trotted out this "fact" a number of times over the last few years to illustrate just how popular the UK’s capital is with its neighbours across the Channel. It appears that Nicolas Sarkozy may have said it as far back as 2008. Wesley Stephenson and Charlotte McDonald brush off their best French to find out the truth. This programme was first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Why does some big successful brands go bust?

0:05.7

Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.

0:11.6

I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.

0:15.6

They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.

0:19.7

And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to owners and employees to ask, what can we learn?

0:25.4

It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just couldn't survive.

0:30.3

Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.

0:34.0

This is the short edition of more or less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.

0:39.8

Thank you for downloading from the BBC.

0:42.8

For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,

0:46.8

go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts.

0:57.1

Hello and welcome to plus or more on the service international de la BBC.

1:00.9

I'm Wesley Stevenson.

1:03.0

And I'm Charlotte MacDonald.

1:04.7

Christoph, it can be quite

1:05.8

incredible, but London is the 6thville

1:08.2

French.

1:16.2

That's enough for the French. Just in case you didn't get that, this is more or less on the BBC World Service.

1:18.9

And I'm Wesley Stevenson with Charlotte McDonald.

1:23.0

Now that clip that you heard there was from French radio in 2008.

1:29.4

You don't understand? Well, listen to these clips broadcast in the UK earlier this year, quoting the same fact.

1:35.8

There are so many French people living in Britain these days that London counts as France's sixth biggest city.

...

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