Pass notes no 2,982: Christine Lagarde

Age: Cinquante-cinq ans. Appearance: Une femme d'un certain âge. Call me psychic, but whoever this woman is, I'm sure she's French. And famous with it. Is she the one in . . . And God Created Woman? That's Brigitte Bardot. Is she the chanteuse who married that titchy president? That's Carla Bruni. Then I'm stumped. I'll give you a clue. Forbes magazine once rated her the world's 17th most powerful woman . . . Keep going. While a newspaper poll found she was almost as popular as the singer Johnny Hallyday . . . Another 100 hints should do it. She used to be a member of the national synchronised swimming team . . . Sounds like we're nearly there. And she's now the French finance minister. Bof, as my French teacher used to say. Why are we wasting ink on a foreign politician? She's applied to run the IMF . I've got one of their fitted kitchens. No you haven't. It stands for the International Monetary Fund, and Lagarde says it needs her expertise "as a lawyer, a minister, a manager and a woman". Is the woman bit relevant? You could say that. The last managing director was Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Ah yes. Isn't he a frog too? He is, though there's probably some silly rule about not calling them frogs. Does the job have to be done by a French person? No, but it traditionally goes to a European. The UK is backing Lagarde. So she's someone Cameron and Osborne could do business with? I didn't realise they let girls into Eton. She's not that posh. She may have spent more than 20 years with a big US law firm, but her parents were academics, and she went to a state school in Le Havre. Can we end with a joke about synchronised swimmers? Does it start: "Why do the French call swimming pools 'piscines'?" It might. Alors, non. Do say: "No diving, no bombing, no bailing out rich countries while undermining poor ones." Don't say: "She's in over her head."