I know I shouldn't like them. It's a terribly unpatriotic thing to admit. But I really do believe I'm warming to the French.

Partly it's a grudging admiration of their stubbornness in defence of self-interest. They don't give a damn who they upset or inconvenience if they feel threatened. They defy or ignore any EC rules that don't suit them. They're bolshie, and bolshiness is a quality I can't help but appreciate in this cowed, conformist world.

But there's another reason for admiring those near neighbours of ours at the other end of the Chunnel. Their young people have apparently discovered some words that their British counterparts seem to have lost sight of: words like "chastity", "virginity", "commitment", "marriage" and "self-restraint".

According to a recent report, the young generation in France have turned their backs on the "free love" attitudes so eagerly embraced 20 or 30 years ago by their parents. Like British girls in the 1950s, young French women want love to come before lust. Before they'll give themselves to their bloke, they expect an engagement ring. And they're prepared to hang on to their virginity until that right man - the potential lifelong partner - comes along.

And what's more, young French men feel much the same way about things. Promiscuity is frowned upon, in either sex.

How very different from life in Millennium Britain, where instant copulation seems to be so much in fashion and anyone who even frowns about single young women who have several children by different men is condemned for being judgmental.

Much of the blame has to lie with television and films. The writers of drama seem to have done away with any pretence at courtship. They're just straight into it.

Couple meet. Couple gaze meaningfully at each other, tongues playing over twitching lips. Couple clamp their mouths together, like demented limpets, while at the same time frenziedly ripping off each other's clothes. If we're lucky, we're spared the rest until the couple, getting dressed, introduce themselves to each other.

Whatever happened to wooing, to getting to know each other and discovering whether or not you like each other? The world of TV relationships is ruled not by the head or the heart but by the loins.

The medical profession, as represented in TV dramas, seems to be particularly badly affected. If it was the same in real life, the NHS wouldn't merely be in a mess. It would have ground to a full stop!

There have been several cursory couplings in Casualty, Holby City and Peak Practice, some of them in lifts and offices. And Coronation Street medic Martin Platt recently made close physical contact with a female colleague in a broom cupboard, which whetted his appetite for a full-scale affair with the Geordie nurse concerned - though I don't know how long he'll put up with someone who calls him "Mah'en".

Small wonder that impressionable kids think that's the way they should carry on, too - blundering from one sexual encounter to another, and hang the emotional, physical and social consequences.

In France, the number of marriages is said to be going up and the divorce rate falling.

In Britain it's the other way round, and single parenthood in young women who have never had a stable, long-term relationship has reached epidemic proportions.

Maybe instead of scorning the French, as we do almost instinctively, we should be seeing if we can learn something from them, following their lead and putting old-fashioned values back on the agenda for boy-girl relationships.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.