In a cluttered and draughty office by the village hall, Monsieur le Maire is trying to appease an irate local yelling down the phone about unfinished building work.

It is a typical French scene in all respects except one: the Mayor of Saint-Céneri-le-Gérei in lower Normandy is Anglais.

Ken Tatham is among dozens of Britons standing in local council elections on March 9 in the rural French communities that are now their home.

He is the only one seeking a third term as council leader, having overcome Gallic distrust of “perfidious Albion” to emerge as a village figurehead. The bearded, avuncular Yorkshireman has been at the head of Saint-Céneri-le-Gérei's 140 residents for more than a decade and wanted to enjoy his retirement.

Fellow councillors begged him to stay on as mayor and promoted him as the centre-right candidate for le Conseil Général - the equivalent of the county council - in the Orne département. With the campaign under way, he has been putting up posters and knocking on doors in villages throughout the ward.

“People know me as the English mayor and some are startled to see I can speak French,” said Mr Tatham, 62, who has lived in France for 40 years. “I heard one man say to his friend: ‘ Actually, he's quite a nice guy'.”

His rise in local politics is testimony to the way that he has got around two enduring French traits - conservatism and red tape - to modernise Saint-Céneri-le-Gérei, which dates from the 7th century. He has redone the sewers and the lighting, installed a second car park, secured funding of €400,000 (£300,000) to turn the crossroads into a square and persuaded le Conseil Général to finance the church.

It has not been easy. When Mr Tatham set about changing the face of the village, feelings ran high - understandably, perhaps, given that the last Briton to mark its history was the 14th Earl of Arundel, who laid siege to the castle in 1434 during the Hundred Years' War. At one point, as roadworks dragged on through the summer, a metal barrier was hurled at the mayor in anger. Recently, a woman telephoned him at 11pm to complain about the new street lighting.

But showing Yorkshire spirit, Mr Tatham plugged on unperturbed. The result has turned Saint-Céneri-le-Gérei into a bright, pleasant village that attracts 2,000 visitors every weekend during the tourist season.

Mr Tatham got into local politics at the behest of his wife, who is French.

“She was a councillor, and like in a lot of married couples, when one does something, the other tends to criticise and make suggestions. That was what I did. In the end, she got fed up and told me that I should go and do something for the village myself.”

Since then, he has discovered the pivotal role played in French society by the 36,000 mayors standing for office in the council elections. Their official duties include raising taxes, managing local roads, looking after public buildings and registering births, marriages and deaths.

There is also an endless list of unofficial services that they are expected to provide. “Basically, people think they can ring you up at any hour of the day or night about anything,” Mr Tatham said.

On Christmas Eve, for instance, a local called to say that rocks were blocking a road. Mr Tatham tried to find maintenance staff to clear them away but no one was available. So he had do it himself with the help of his wife, children and grandchildren.

More recently, a woman contacted him to say that she wanted to be buried in the family vault but needed the approval of her brother, to whom she had not spoken for 65 years after a quarrel. “I had to go and see the brother myself. It took three days of coming and going between them to sort it out,” Mr Tatham said.

Outside influence

Richard Leakey, the son of renowned British-Kenyan archaeologists Louis and Mary Leakey, founded an opposition party in Kenya in the 1990s to combat President Moi

Donald Maclean fled to Moscow after being exposed as a Soviet agent in 1951. He assimilated well into Russian society and served in the Soviet Foreign Ministry, for which he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour

Adele Ann Wilby, an Australian citizen, migrated to Britain in the late 1970s, where she met her future husband, Tamil Anton Balasingham. They moved to Sri Lanka and she became leader of the Tamil Tigers’ women's wing

Sources: Times archives

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