French Special

Bienvenue to a very special episode of the show from Amiens in northern France! Twice a year, a huge fair bursting with antiquités takes over the city’s streets, drawing 80,000 bargain hunters from across Europe. Among them are a red and a blue team of bargain hunters – one French and one British – ready for an international battle, the likes of which has not seen since the Battle of Hastings! And talking of 1066, presenter Natasha Raskin Sharp celebrates an exciting new twist in Anglo-French history – the loan of the famous Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum in London. She learns how the dramatic story of the Norman invasion is depicted over 700 metres of exquisite embroidery. And at Reading Museum, she meets expert Ben Bishop and gets up close to a stitch-by-stitch Victorian replica of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Meanwhile in Amiens, can students of the French language Helena and Louise, who are in blue, conquer the home team – les rouges – mum and son Jane and Moïse as they dash around 2,000 stalls?

With 350 euros in each pair's pockets, the teams scour La Grande réderie d'Amiens. On the blue team, Louise is determined to find something typically French, with help from expert Caroline Hawley. But Helena accidentally offers to pay in francs! Alongside the French team, expert Thomas Forrester tries his best to speak the language, but he negotiates the price of a toy horse up instead of down! The teams then return to the UK for the auction in Chichester – but who will triumph?