OPINION - London is the best place to stay for the Paris Olympics — we don't have bedbugs

Barely a day goes by without someone prominent proclaiming that this summer London is going to be the overspill city of the Olympics. In fact, we’ve carried many pieces about it ourselves. Come on in, we say, the water’s lovely (considering the country’s sewage problem, London’s drinking water is certainly better than the water in Paris), and we don’t have bed bugs! Not French ones, anyway.

And now it’s not just Londoners who are experience even worse than it is already. One French industry expert told me last week: “Shopping in Paris is going to be a nightmare. No one is going to want to have a big cardboard shopping bag banging against their legs when the centre of the city is full of hordes of people in backpacks and shorts. It’s just not a very French experience.”