Michael Lonsdale

Just saw Munich, Spielberg's thriller about the Israeli assassination squad that avenged the murder of Olympic athletes in 72. I don't rate film very highly. But what I want to do here is draw attention to one of the secondary actors. He has one of those faces that you instantly recognise because you have seen him a dozen times. The trouble is you can't remember where. I refer to Michael, or sometimes Michel, Lonsdale, who plays the quintessentially amoral Frenchman named in the film only "Papa". The scene in which he presides over a extended family luncheon with millions of adoring grandchildren is utter tosh of course, as is the whole notion of his empire of information. I was just happy to see his jowly face again, and try to recall its previous outings. Two come to mind straight away. He was the baddy Hugo Drax in one of the great Roger Moore James Bonds, Moonraker. And in the 1972 Day of the Jackal, he played Claude Lebel, the detective whose inspired work foils James Fox's assassination bid on de Gaulle. In that film he has a moustache and no beard but the big cheeks are a giveaway. Further research reminds me that he was the abbot in The Name of the Rose, and Anton Grigoriev -- the Russian consul in Berne -- in the TV series Smiley's People. Actually he'd been in scores of films, most of them French, since the 1960s. He is half-and-half. His father was English and his mother French, and he was born in Paris in 1931. Interesting character.

Anyone who has read Le Figaro newspaper at any point over the last half century will be familiar with the work of the cartoonist Jacques Faizant, who has died at the age of 87. His drawings appeared regularly on the paper's front page, often featuring a bonneted Marianne, two spindly-legged old ladies, a gentleman with a Napoleon III goatee and a bemused cat. Faizant was an unashamed right-winger and he used these symbols of the bourgeoisie to air his own feelings of ironic surprise at changes in French society. He was also a reverential -- not to say sycophantic -- supporter of Charles de Gaulle, the first of five Fifth Republic presidents that he caricatured. In one well-known drawing, de Gaulle is seen muttering to himself after a press conference: "What would I do if I didn't have me?" On the general's death in 1970, Faizant drew Marianne -- the female symbol of France -- weeping over the massive trunk of a fallen tree. In the cartoon shown above, Faizant has a rare dig at de Gaulle, implying that the 1961 Evian peace accords to end the war in Algeria are a sell-out. Faizant never had quite the same rapport with subsequent presidents, but his cartoons kept appearing over the decades. By the 1990s it was clear that management at le Figaro wanted to get rid of him. His work reeked of the past, and the paper needed badly to attract younger readers. In 1999 he was relegated to the inside pages, and finally last October he was dropped altogether. Just three months later he died. President Jacques Chirac -- who he first portrayed in the mid 1970's as a sharp-chinned young prime minister -- said Faizant's death "leaves a great void in the hearts of all those who over the years loyally kept their daily rendez-vous with his cartoons."

Segolene Royal

Could France have a Royal back at its helm next year for the first time in a century and a half? And a female Royal at that? Needless to say, I speak not of a reconstituted monarchy, but of the latest star to light the political firmament here. The woman in question is Segolene Royal. She is tall and attractive. She is the partner of Socialist leader Francois Hollande and the mother of their four children. She is a Socialist MP and the president of the Poitou-Charente region. She served briefly as minister of the environment in 1992, and later had junior portfolios for children and family affairs in the government of Lionel Jospin. She is also the person most of the French public say they would like to see representing the Socialists at the 2007 presidential election. One poll last week even suggested that she is now the most popular politician in France -- of all political persuasions. In other words she outranked not just rivals on the left like Jack Lang and Laurent Fabius but also the big hitters on the right like Dominique de Villepin and Nicolas Sarkozy. If say Sarkozy were to be the right's candidate in May next year, and the left agreed to put up Royal -- who is to say that she would not be the winner? After all the story of recent elections in France has been flip followed by flop. The old lot are always turfed out -- which means Buggin's turn could well go to the left next time. Personally I think Royal is the best-placed to challenge the right. People like her because she breaks the mould. She is not one of the "dinosaurs" of the party like Fabius or Lang. Because of that she is viewed with mistrust by many in the socialist party, but that in a way is a great asset. The public is utterly fed up with the same old faces. But whether she would have the weight to beat a Sarkozy or a Villepin is another matter. To have been environment minister for less than a year in 1992 is not exactly an impressive CV. And she has yet to put her name to a single substantive policy initiative. Supporters say that is all to come. She is launching a website and political club this month, and a book follows in March. But the problem is that in today's divided Socialist party, saying anything of significance -- say on Europe or the future of the French "model" -- risks reigniting the internal conflagration. For May 2007 I would put my money on a Sarkozy-Royal run-off, with Sarkozy winning hands down.