Moi, je suis Clouseau!

Prompted by a reader's note, I was about to describe a scene I'd had with a hotel clerk in Provence who couldn't understand my French, when I realized I don't have to: It's virtually identical to the scene in Return of the Pink Panther, where Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau is trying to check into a hotel, his preposterous French accent (I should talk…) pulling the r in “room” from somewhere between his larynx and his liver.

Clouseau: Do you have a rgghum?
Clerk: A…“rgghum”?
Clouseau: What?
Clerk: You said, do I have a “rgghum”?
Clouseau [impatiently]: I know perfectly well what I said; I said, do you have a rgghum!
Clerk: You mean, do you have a room.
Clouseau: That is what I have been saying, you fool!

Hilarious --- except when it happens to you, temper and all!