Jean-Marie Gourio downed his third beer, stood up and headed off on the next leg of a great French literary journey. His itinerary took in bistrot after bistrot, bar after bar and café after café.

“My publisher thinks I’m studying human nature,” the best-selling author said, with a broad grin. “But mainly I just go for a drink.”

A former journalist, Gourio started to note comments overheard at the counter of his local bar in 1987. “I jotted down one, then a second and then a third. After 15 or so, I knew I was on to something.”

He made a selection and published them as a book, Brèves de Comptoir (Bar Briefs), which proved a success. Two decades later he has published 15 volumes, sold 1.3 million copies and provided an unparalleled portrait of the drinking classes of France, with their unwitting humour and occasionally piercing insights into our life and times.

This month he brought out a 20th anniversary edition of Brèves de Comptoir - “the most surprising, poetic, idiotic, craziest” sentences he has heard in a lifetime propping up bars across France.

It has again been a hit, with 50,000 sales after three weeks.

“I’ve made a fortune by hanging around in bistrots,” Gourio, 50, a round, loquacious man with a shock of curly brown hair, said.

“When I go to see my publisher, who’s a very chic man with an office under the Eiffel Tower, I tell him I’ve had a hard day’s work in the bistrot.

“He smiles and says ‘Very good, carry on’.”

Gourio always tries to stand at the end of the bar, where he can see and hear the regulars “who pop in for a drink every evening when they take the dog for a walk or go down to buy the newspaper”. He added: “It’s not the same if you sit down at a table. You don’t get conversations going all over the place like you do at the bar.”

Certain themes are recurrent in bistrot talk, if his work is anything to go by.

Marital strife, for instance, crops up often, as does a general dislike of intellectuals, artists and modern technology. Foreigners are also viewed with distrust, and none more so than those on the other side of the Channel. “I could never be an Englishman,” is typical of the comments to be found in the work of Gourio.

Alcohol, predictably, is another favourite topic, although Gourio said that the French have a different approach to it than the British.

“There isn’t the same violence associated with alcohol in France,” he said. “Arguments are common in bars but fights are rare. And a Frenchman will never admit that he is drunk.”

He says that never goes to a bistrot, bar or café in search of quotes. “I always go to places I want to drink in because of the pleasure of being there. I think that’s one reason for my success. You couldn’t do what I do if it was a chore,” Gourio added.

Almost invariably, Gourio, who also writes novels, chooses working-class establishments in la France profonde where he can listen to the banter of carpenters, roofers and tree-fellers.

“You’d never get the same comments from a banker or a lawyer.” But these bars are in decline, from 510,000 in 1910 to about 50,000 today.

“They keep being turned into clothes boutiques or shops selling flat-screen televisions. I used to think this world would never disappear. Now I’m not so sure.”

Being philosophical

“A painting is only a thing you fix to the wall with a nail. Rembrandt’s nothing without a nail"

"What do you see with green eyes? My husband only loves me when he’s drunk With the TV, we don’t have time to talk, but that’s not a bad thing seeing that we don’t have much to say to each other"

"White wine is bad for the nerves but what’s even worse for the nerves is when there’s no white wine"

"The Channel Tunnel, if it’s to go to England, no thanks"

"The advantage of pure malt whiskey is that you can work afterwards"

"I never know what to say, but that doesn’t stop me from talking"

"Being buried alive is better than being buried dead If ever Jesus returns, it’s going to be press conference after press conference"

"I’m an alcohol historian more than an alcoholic If you eat your wife off a plate, who’s going to do the washing-up?"

"What we need is an aperitif dispenser for when the café is shut, like they have in banks for your money"

"After four children you should have the right to give birth to something else"

How to make friends

Jean-Marie Gourio’s guide to making friends in a bistrot

1 Arrive at 6pm. “By 8pm, it’s too late. You’ve missed the boat and groups have already formed.”

2 Stand in the middle of the bar. “But don’t get too close to the people next to you. You shouldn’t crowd them.”

3 Don’t try to launch into a conversation at first. “There’s nothing worse than the bloke who butts in as soon as he arrives.”

4 Don’t offer to buy a round for everyone. “Either people will think your trying to buy their friendship or they’ll think you’re stupid and will take advantage of you.”

5 Don’t buy a drink for the bar man or lady. “It’s very rarely done in France unless you know them very, very well.”

6 Break the ice by asking for advice, for instance on the best local restaurant. “Everyone will want to help and you’ll soon be in an animated discussion. That’s the sort of thing that goes down well.”

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