This was one of your all-time greats.
A few years ago I was on a train from Paris to Cologne. Someone in the next compartment was singing "Country Roads" quite loudly. It sounded harsh and as if the singer had memorized the words without understanding them. When he finished it he would start over without a pause.
The train approached Aachen and stopped. I looked out the window and saw boxcars, hundreds of boxcars, some very old, on shuttle lines all over the rail-yard. I had not noticed them before. The train started again and moved slowly through the yard as if the box-cars were special objects of interest to the passengers. And I could still hear the singing.
I couldn't stand to hear "Country Roads" after that trip, or even think about the words, which previously I had thought quite moving, distinctively American, specifically to the displacement and nostalgia of Southerners away from home.
When I read your parody of the song I laughed out loud. It was not just a tour de force, it was like having something of value that I had lost returned to me. So, merci bien.
David Hasselhoff is big over there, too. It seems more convincing since he hasn't changed his name; and the show Babewatch doesn't explain this phenomenon.
Still doesn't change the Jerry Lewis/France thing, though. What is the deal with that? Other than Jacques Chirac is an elected official, I guess...