Sacha Distel is everywhere you look in London right now - beaming down from the side of double-decker buses and black cabs, grinning from the walls lining the escalators to the city's Underground and smirking away outside the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand, surrounded by a bevy of showgirls in fishnet tights. In short, Monsieur Distel - who shot to fame in the UK charts back in 1970 with Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head - has taken London's West End by storm, playing the role of wise-cracking lawyer Billy Flynn in Kander and Ebb's American musical Chicago.

"Le Chic - Sacha Distel joins Chicago!" proclaim the black-and-white billboards plastered all over the city walls. And, as if this were not enough of a welcome for France's premier crooner, the British press (not normally renowned for taking French artists to its heart!) launched its own wave of Distel-mania. "Sacha's the ultimate heart-throb", announced the normally staid Daily Telegraph, "He still makes hundreds of thousands of matronly bosoms flutter with delight." "The sound of continental sophistication," cooed The Observer, while the London Evening Standard decided Sacha "still has that certain 'Je ne sais quoi', even if he is old enough to qualify for a bus pass!"

Won over by Sacha's velvet-smooth vocals and inimitable Gallic charm - not to mention his outrageous French accent! - British music critics showered Chicago with rave reviews and the show continues to pull in impressive audiences today. Helas! The critics have been rather less kind to Sacha's compatriots in the West End. Journalists unanimously panned Charles Aznavour's musical based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec, forcing the show to close long before the end of its planned run. When interviewed about the failure of his musical in The Times, Aznavour merely shrugged his shoulders and blamed it on the "Mad Cow War". "We were getting a standing ovation from audiences every night," the French chanson star complained, "but the press wasn't very kind. They are knocking everything French at the moment ... It's because of the beef."

Luc Plamondon and Richard Cocciante have enjoyed a mega-hit world-wide with their modern musical re-working of the Victor Hugo classic Notre-Dame de Paris. But despite throwing a lavish 'first-night' party in London attended by the likes of Sophia Loren, Quasimodo and the rest of the cast have failed to set bells ringing in the West End. One particularly disgruntled reviewer recently panned Notre-Dame de Paris in The London Evening Standard, complaining that "Luc Plamondon and Richard Cocciante have taken one of the world's best-known stories and turned it into a nonsensical, through-sung procession of Europop ditties, re-upholstered with buttock-clenchingly clumsy English lyrics ... Anyone who pays £37.50 to watch this has every right to get the hump!".

Jérôme Pradon, a French singer currently playing the male lead in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Whistle Down the Wind, was not surprised by the reaction of the British press. "The thing is, in Anglo-Saxon musicals you get to sing with a real orchestra," says Pradon, "but the cast of Notre-Dame de Paris perform with a pre-recorded soundtrack, so perhaps London audiences have felt a bit short-changed."

Pradon, one of the rare French performers to have made it big in London's West End, trained as an actor at the prestigious Cours Florent in Paris. Applying make-up backstage at the Aldwych Theatre before Wednesday night's show, Pradon chatted away to me in impressively accentless English, admitting that in the early days of his career he'd always found musicals "a bit naff, really".

"But then a friend of mine told me they were auditioning for Les Misérables in Paris," he says, "so I sent my CV along. I'd had no formal musical training - just a couple of singing lessons and I'd never even heard of Les Miz. That shocked the people I was auditioning for, I can tell you! Anyway, they sent me away with a tape of the show and asked me to learn the part of Enjolras. When I listened to the tape, I couldn't believe my ears, I thought it was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard!"

Pradon ended up training so hard for the show that he ended up landing the role of Marius, one of the male leads in Cameron Mackintosh's production of Les Misérables, which premiered in Paris at Le Theatre Mogador in 1991. The French did not appear to appreciate having their history retold by an Englishman, however, and the show closed after just seven and a half months. But by then Pradon had been bitten by the "musical" bug and asked to audition for the English version of Les Miz in London. Much to his surprise, the producers offered him the part of the American G.I. Chris - the male lead in another Boublil and Schönberg musical, Miss Saigon - instead.

"Singing in English was really stressful and exhausting at first," Pradon admits, "there wasn't just the problem of the language, but the accent as well. I had intensive training sessions with a drama coach to make sure I could perform with a flawless American accent. I remember I was the only French guy up for the role of Chris and I couldn't even speak English at the time. The other actors auditioning with me kept looking at me like I had three heads or something - and I can't say I blame them!"

After a year in Miss Saigon, Pradon went on to play Napoleon in a short-lived musical in Toronto, then returned to London's West End to star in another Boublil and Schönberg musical, Martin Guerre. Shortly afterwards, he found himself auditioning in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber for the part of Judas in the new video version of Jesus Christ Superstar. Ironically, in spite of his star status in the UK - where he has had to adjust to the "culture shock of people driving on the wrong side of the road and thinking with the left-hand side of their brain!" - Pradon remains a complete unknown in France.

Eager to return to Paris to pursue his career on the other side of the Channel, Pradon is nevertheless wary of the French attitude to musicals. "French audiences don't understand that musicals can be a form of theatre," he says, "They don't understand the idea of an actor who can sing or a singer who can act! In France you've either got operettas which are considered really boring and old-fashioned or musicals like Starmania which are actually more like concerts. In England operetta evolved hand-in-hand with drama and produced real 'musical theatre'."

In other words, don't expect to see Jerome Pradon in a forthcoming production of Les Dix Commandements or Roméo et Juliette!

Julie Street in London