1. "You can never know what it‘s like until you‘re here," said Samual, who has earned the famous white hat, called the kepi blanc, that marks the promotion from recruit to Legionnaire.

2. President de Gaulle often appeared in the same trademark kepi when it suited his purpose, Churchill (who went straight to the trenches of Flanders with the rank of colonel when he lost his cabinet job in 1'16) just loved dressing up and shamelessly wore uniforms of all three services as prime minister and minister of defence.

3. Unfortunately – for the a.h. column – most of the jokes about the kind of overblown bombast that typifies opening ceremonies have already been done, in the hilarious Hail, Hail Freedonia sequence from the Marx Brothers‘ best film Duck Soup (if anybody tells you A Night at the Opera, they need to be re–educated, possibly by being beaten around the neck with a sock filled with horse manure). Article continues The Italians followed the Freedonian model quite closely, right down to the funny helmet with feathers that ceremonial soldiers always wear – the kepi, I think Barry Davies said it was called, in his hilarious commentary (yeah, right) – and the fact that just when you thought the wretched thing had finally finished, it started all over again.