BOF! Sacre bleu! Just five minutes in the company of Raymond Blanc, and I'm overwhelmed by a desire to spout the kind of French phrases last current when Charles de Gaulle was alive. Mais oui! Because, at times, when Monsieur Blanc talks, or he waves his hands, or pronounces "country" as "CON-tree", it seems as if he might be the Frenchest man in Britain, if not the world.

The 61-year-old has lived in Britain for 35 years and has an OBE but his accent is still as thick as a crème anglaise – or, as we say here, custard – and when I ask him if he feels in any way British, he says, "No! Never!" with the kind of Gallic flourish that suggests I've just grievously insulted his mother, the sainted Maman Blanc.

The idea. How absolument absurd. And in some ways it is. For example, when he describes to me how he wooed his fiancee, Natalia Traxel (in the French manner, with vintage champagne and poetry). Although he does say that Britain has had an effect. He has learned certain crucial British traits: he now knows, for example, how to "take the piss".

"It's true! I have learned to laugh at myself. Which I couldn't do before. Never! You know a Frenchman never laughs about himself. It is always, 'We are the best!' And I was exactly the same."

And then there's the fact that he refers to "our heritage" and "our traditions" and "our produce" and it turns out he really does mean ours: British heritage, traditions and produce. Then there are his two sons, born in Britain, educated at public schools ("This was very difficult for me, very difficult, the idea that they would be made into… English gentlemen.") And when I try to make some complicated point about his insider-outsider status, and the fact that Natalia is Russian, and his ex-wife Hungarian, he remonstrates.

"But my first wife was English! And she gave me two sons, Olivier and Sebastien and I was with her for 12 years and if you ask me, 'Was I faithful?' Yes I was! In 12 years I didn't have a single affair!"

"But I didn't ask you!" I protest, although I am, of course, agog.

"Well, I am telling you anyway! I was completely faithful. And this is very un-French. That is my English side."

Although Blanc is perhaps the Frenchest man in Britain, he's also just a little bit British too. But then, maybe this is because when it comes to what we eat, we are now just a little bit French. Or, to be more accurate, we are a little bit Raymond Blanc-esque. His influence has been immense, in so many ways. His Oxfordshire hotel and restaurant, Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons, is the culinary equivalent of the finest Swiss finishing school: 27 chefs who have worked for him have gone on to win Michelin stars. He's bequeathed an entire generation of British chefs his creed that food is not just food, but "life, joy, celebration, holding hands and saying that I love you toujours".

He was ahead of his time in championing organic produce and local provenance, but given how outspoken he's been about the state of British food – the memory of the fish and chips he ate on the ferry over still makes him wrinkle his nose in disgust – he admits that the gulf between the two countries is not what it was.

So is French food still the best? "Everything changes. It is true that the French, more than any other nation, have exported their food culture across the world. But creatively what is happening is that both consumers and chefs are changing, and that's an exciting moment because British gastronomy can now match the very best of France, and that is new."

What marks out his cooking, he says, is that he has been "enriched" by British culture. "If you take Arab culture in France, their food has not entered the repertoire. Whereas here the food of Pakistan and India has entered it completely. My food is French still but I have been enriched by other cultures. And that is the difference between me and a Frenchman who has stayed in France."

Listening to the tape later, there's a part of me that thinks this is Raymond Blanc being Raymond Blanc, ie, generous and encouraging. And actually, he's thinking "Well, of course, French food is better, you espèce d'idiot, but I can see you're trying…" Because if you've happened to catch any of his recent TV series, The Restaurant, or Kitchen Secrets, which returns this month, being generous and encouraging is what Blanc does. Self-made and self-taught, when he arrived in London he says it took him four days to travel to Oxford because no one could understand a word he said. He landed a job in a country pub, the Rose Revived, married the boss's daughter, opened up his first restaurant in a cheap, unfashionable site in north Oxford, and just started cooking, taking his mother, Maman Blanc, as his great culinary inspiration.

Despite his success, there are regrets. He divorced his first wife in painful circumstances, not helped by the pressures of work ("Perhaps I could have gone a little slower"), plus he used to be a shouter, "before I knew better". But what Blanc likes to do now is to encourage. Kitchen Secrets, he says, "is not about me educating you. It's a conversation". Then, flicking through the book which accompanies the series, he starts conversing with me.

"So, hmm, what are the main problems with your cooking?"

"Um," I say. "I'm not good at following recipes. I always end up changing them."

"Ah yes. You are a bit like me."

Actually, no, Raymond, probably not, but he waves it off and starts to give me instructions on how to make the café crème in a chocolate cup, a previous hit on Kitchen Secrets: an impossibly difficult-looking coffee cup made entirely of chocolate, filled with a coffee parfait and sabayon, accompanied by chocolate ganache sugar lumps. "It's so easy!" he insists. "Believe me you can do this..."

And he looks wounded when I point out that I'm as likely to attempt it as make a Fiat Punto. Anyway, I want to ask him more about Natalia, not least because in the photos I've seen she towers over him, and as a taller-than-average woman myself, this always impresses me.

"And I always make her wear stilettos when we go out!" he says.

She's also about three decades his junior. "But then I couldn't ever imagine being with a 60-year-old woman."

You can't say that, I say!

"I know! I'll probably be crucified for it," he says. "And you'll probably be the one crucifying me!"

I won't actually. We all make our choices and Blanc will do things the Blanc way. Or, as they say in France, bof.