French town up in arms at description as 'yokels, old farts and too many cows'

Within days, furious locals hit back with a Facebook page called "Les Creusois against Technikart", where 1,500 followers freely vented their anger against Parisian snobs.

"I wouldn't give up my peaceful life in the Creuse for survival in Paris for anything in the world," wrote one called Jocelyne. "Much more interesting things happen here than in the Parisian grime," wrote Sylvain, adding that while Parisians passed each other by "like zombies", in Guéret "the real values are human". "A complaint or a bullet!," wrote Fabrice.

One of the most virulent critics was Stéphanie Dagge, an English writer who moved to the area from Cork six years ago with her husband and three children to run a llama trekking farm and carp fishery. Her youngest daughter, Caitlin, goes to school in Guérert.

"All in all it's an unprovoked, hateful tirade from an outsider about a friendly (apart from a couple of government departments!), pleasant country town," she wrote in her blog on expat life in rural France. "I suppose its purpose was to win a cheap laugh from its sophisticated readership. Boy, has it backfired!," she wrote .

"The Technikart crowd may think everything is better and classier in Paris, but just maybe it isn't."

Local youths interviewed by the magazine later complained they had been misquoted and the row snowballed into a political issue ahead of this month's legislative elections.

Guéret's Socialist mayor, Michel Vergnier, also running for re-election as local MP, published a written response in Technikart saying: "These words wound and anger me."

"We readily accept criticism as it is a source of progress, we can laugh about jokes or caricatures that are sometimes levelled at us, but we refuse the insult that is made here."

Faced with the deluge of criticism, the magazine's editor Raphaël Turcat told regional newspaper Montagne that the row would not stop him visiting "this superb region, where visibly, the pride of certain inhabitants is inversely proportional to their sense of humour".

He issued a grudging apology in this month's editorial saying he it was "easy to understand and regret that some people felt insulted by certain statements in this article". But he added that the magazine would continue to express "our humour, our big mouth and sometimes our provocations."

The mayor, meanwhile, has invited the editorial team to a barbecue to clear the air.

"I hope they get heckled," wrote Mrs Dagge.