…as she was walking in front of me and caught sight of Sydney Tower.
I thought that French people only said that in bad parodies. That’s what les professeurs kept on telling us at the Alliance Française.
I wonder if she picked it up by watching a bad French parody? Wouldn’t that be ironic?
Did she, by any chance, also wish aloud that she knew what she knows now when she was younger?
The bad parodies picked it up someplace. What makes those parodies bad is that people don’t say “ooh la la” once every ten years or so: they say it every other sentence.
Yep, my french stepmother and her endless visiting relations toss that out at every impressive surprise.
You break through you’re cliche-o-meter fairly quickly, I find.
An ethnically Indian friend of mine, London born and bred, and as English as anything, said she was in an Indian grocery shop one time, and a customer actually said, “O GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME!” She said she had to leave. 
I have an Italian (Florentine) cousin by marriage. He says “ooh la la” all the time. It’s so natural for him I don’t really think about it.
French motorsport commentators exclaim “Ooh la la!” all the time when there are crashes or close calls.
I love Ooh La La by Goldfrapp.
Susan
I had much the same reaction when I visited Scotland and discovered that even quite young people referred to things and people as “wee” whatevers.
When I heard it spoken, it seemed to me it was used more as an expression of surprise/dismay, rather than surprise/pleasure.
As in:
“We’re very late!”
“Oh, la la la la la!”
“Oh, la la, did you see that? That moblyette almost hit me!”
That is pretty much standard here. “Aye” for “yes” as well.
I almost choked on my food when a waitress in England called me “ducky” once.
I heard a child at the beach (in St. Martin) exclaim ooh la la, le poisson (sp?) when he spotted some fish in the shallows. I assumed it was just a statement of suprise/anything else.
A German applicant at my office had an honet-to-God Hitler mustache. Same hairstyle, too although his face was different. I almost lost it when he said in a heavy German accent that their proposed project might have to acquire more land to assure enough “Living Space” for the tenants.
Yes, I was taught it’s “Oh la la”, not “Oo la la” as in the parodies.