French Stink Offends the English

The Paris police department issued a statement saying the gas posed no health risks but warned that it smelled like a mixture of “sweat, garlic and rotten eggs”.

Sounds pretty much like l’odeur habituelle de la France. Okay, maybe not the rotten egg part. We’re talking a mercaptan release near Rouen which blew south then up across the Channel into Kent.

The culprit? Lubrizol. Owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Blame Warren Buffett!

UPDATE January 22, 2013

Quelle horreur! It’s reached Dover.

"The smell is just like the worst flatulent person ever standing with their back turned to you," Dover resident James Boyes told the Daily Mail. "It is truly, truly awful."

It’s drifted over Hampshire, Dorset, Oxfordshire, Northampton and the East Midlands.

It’s even hit London. It’s bigger than big.

The National Grid, which would normally deal with up to 10,000 calls a day to its gas emergency phone line, had received more than 100,000 calls by 14:00 GMT. A spokesman said it was an "unprecedented" volume.