In reply to Dugg: Well I have met plenty of reasonable British guides, also Italian ones and even the odd German (or is that a tautology?), but the number of incidents of French or Swiss guides acting like arses are too many to count (especially on the Matterhorn in the Swiss case, but that really is a law unto itself). This may be coincidence, but I suspect not.
It is probably not helped by the French guiding system, rather like the French ski-intructing selection, encouraging absolute hard-core, envelope pushing alpinists - and then telling them to take punters up the voie normale on Mont Blanc du Tacul for the first 3 years, while the more experienced guides get to take the more capable clients up the more interesting and challenging routes.