From my very first visit to France… it was love at first sight/sip… red wine… (hic… definitely not bic ) 
Biro us not on our radar except as eg a general knowledge question.
Not according to Stella - our star Biro user
Now then, now then… you can’t label me like that… I’ve never used a capital B to write the word biro… and yes, you’re just joking… but I can’t imagine why.
as I’ve said, during my childhood the ballpoint pen was alternatively called a biro… it’s a thing… something with which to write… quite possibly if I’d had to write the word “biro” as a child, it would have been with a small b… it’s a thing…just like pen, dinner, sweets and all sorts of other stuff… 
it would never have occurred to me to write the word biro with a capital b… and it doesn’t occur to me nowadays, either… 
Stella isn’t a French person she grew up with biros, French people don’t say Biro we say bic as you surmised, and Biro is just the answer to a general knowledge question for us.
When I was growing up I said Biro in GB speaking English and bic in Fr speaking French.
And to confuse things bic also make disposable razors and lighters.
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I feel like I missed out on growing up in an age where people seemingly spent so much time discussing writing implements. I appreciate that for some of the more ‘advanced’ members of the forum there was little TV to discuss when they were growing up, but I had no idea the world was such a hotbed of pen talk, be it Bic or biro…
Flowerpot Men… Mr Turnip… Blue Peter… Ready, Steady, Go… Six-Five Special… University Challenge… amongst others…
All joking apart… me and my siblings could read and write before we were school age.
We always wrote in our diaries, letters, handmade cards and all sorts of stuff. Writing was a habit/hobby/whatever one likes to call it…
EDIT: one year it was a really difficult decision… should I put “manicure set” or “writing case” on my (hopeful) Christmas List
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Did the words where’s my Biro/who’s got my Biro/did you swipe my Biro/can someone lend me a Biro never cross your lips?
I seem to have spent quite a lot of my life writing by hand so having the wherewithal is important (not to anyone else, obv, merely to one).
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I’ve only ever called it a pen I think, but maybe I’m the odd one out, I tend to be the odd one in most situations 
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I wouldn’t dream of risking your wrath by arguing with your self-assessment …
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When I say ‘pen’ I mean fountain pen. Hence lumping all ball point pens together as ‘biro’.
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Personally, I’ve always been known for calling a spade a spade
It was goose versus swan in my day…
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Seamus Heaney somewhere in a poem maybe about his father says something like ‘my pen’s my spade I’ll dig with it’
Lovely …
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Wow thank you, blast from the past, I must have been 14 or 15 when I read it! If you like Heaney you might like (I very much like) the seed cutters which is slightly similar. But I still think whatever you say say nothing is possibly my favourite 
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For me and my siblings too, probably because we were made to sit and write thankyou letters the day after a birthday or Christmas.
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Yep, the letters were a bit stilted at first and increased in wordage/length as we increased in age… 
I was thrilled to come across a note I had written to my Mum when I was about 3… just a careful scrawl really , but it could be read… just saying… I love you Get well soon…
I had no idea she had kept it all those years…
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Hi Vero, CNI? Please clarify. Do you need one if you are an EU citizen in France?
What nationality are you? As don’t exist for Danes, Norwegians and Irish people.