Thanks for taking the time @George1 and responding, I do appreciate it.
Definitely useful and I suspect some interesting conversations with HMRC lie ahead, fortunately I have both your advice and my friendly French tax accountant to help!
A pleasure to try and help. Given what youâve previously said about your life (eg wife and house) being in France, not the UK, and can evidence it (ie via a residence certificate from France) it would be really quite difficult for HMRC to argue that the facts support you having closer fiscal ties to the UK.
If you feel able and willing to share the outcome, that would be interesting and helpful. I would be very surprised if you donât prevail!
Good luck, and do circle back if you need further suggestionsâŚ
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Update on how my knowledge has been increasing âŚ..
The tax bill iro dividends has been processed by the French tax office and helpfully they have set up a payment plan for me to fulfill 
I have removed both the dividends and a capital distribution from my UK tax return as I have been advised that they are both disregarded income (back to whether you are a UK tax resident or not). For the record you can very much be both and I suspect I will be both in a couple of years time depending on the tie in rules etc.
Interestingly, and I suggest others do this also, I have treated my interest received from UK banks as disregarded income also.
In effect, as I am not currently a UK tax resident (but am a UK tax payer via PAYE) all the income other than PAYE I receive from the UK is treated as disregarded. France will tax it of course but critically if you do not disregard the appropriate income you will run the risk of being taxed twice.
I am not 100% convinced yet but I am getting there so brace yourself there maybe another update along in due course. I am 100% convinced the French side of my tax affairs is correct just not from an HMRC perspective, it feels wrong to not declare why I appear to ignore chunks of income from my self assessment!
My uk tax return includes none of those, and never did. It only has elements that are taxed in the UK and I donât quite understand why this feels wrong to you? Itâs one of HMRCs business!
Wrong in the sense of how would HMRC know if I was deliberately but correctly excluding it, deliberately trying to avoid tax or just plain naivety which is obviously no defense.
2years ago HMRC wrote me a stinker of a letter wanting to tax some money taken out of a euro domiciled AssV that I used to help pay for a house in France. I never disclosed it to HMRC and according to the AssV provider neither did they âŚ. yet they knew. There is a lot of financial data cross borders.
What I donât want is HMRC sniffing around again.
Also consider the changes HMRC is bringing in for 25/26.