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A French experience

6th May 2009 by Helena 14 Comments  

Yesterday was a busy day. In between checking my amazon rating, I interviewed Christine Ockrent, who is Belgian but one of those women you always think of as French because she made her career there. She was, among other notable things, France’s first female news anchor and also the only journalist to get an interview with Saddam Hussein during the first gulf war.

She was late due to lunch with a Sheikha and so I waited with her entourage of French women in the Business Centre at the Emirates Palace Hotel. There is one thing I had forgotten about French women. They all smoke. I couldn’t believe it. There I was innocently working out what to ask Madame Ockrent when suddenly I was being fumigated.

“Oh, do you mind the smoke?” said one.

“Well, I’m not mad about it, ” I replied.

“Oh, sorry,” she said making a lame attempt to wave her poison in the other direction.

What is the point I wondered, in asking someone if they mind and then carrying on? ‘Oh do you mind if I sleep with your husband?’ ‘You do? Oh well, try not to notice would you?’

christine-ockrent.jpg

Anyway Madame Ockrent was extremely interesting. She is now CEO of France 24 and here to launch the extended Arab version of the channel. She has done pretty much everything I always wanted to; including reading the news on national TV, writing books, working as a foreign correspondent all over the world and getting major scoops.

And, as far as I know, she doesn’t smoke….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009


Filed Under: Pet hates, Women, blog --> Tagged With: experience, french

14 thoughts on A French experience

  • sharyn g says:
    6th May 2009 at 4:11 am

    Smoking is very hard on the skin and muscles in the face. It surprises me that French women who are soooo obsessive about looking young would indulge. Other than that it is a filthy, smelly habit. I have asthma and am allergic to smoke. Even that does not deter a smoker from lighting up a cigarette.

  • Elisabeth Loesch says:
    6th May 2009 at 7:07 pm

    Christine Okrent is by all standards a woman of high intelligence, regarded in journalistic and political milieus as a very high achiever. Check her profile on wikipedia and you-ll understand what I mean. She has been named La reine Christine. As far as I know no one has ever mentioned her disturbing smoking habit. It is extremely clicheesque to reduce a person to what is in fact a very common addiction, certainly not exclusively French.
    It s like the forest and the trees. It shows how you see the world. I like her version a lot more. I like her bravery and her honesty. And I don-t give a hoot whether she smokes or not. But of course, I m French…

  • Texafornian says:
    7th May 2009 at 1:07 am

    Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why French women are thin, the smoking. Smoking is an appetite suppressant.

  • helena says:
    7th May 2009 at 6:54 am

    Hello Elisabeth
    I think you missed the point here, my conclusion is that she is an incredible woman and that she DOES NOT smoke – which makes her even more amazing!
    Hx

  • Elisabeth Loesch says:
    7th May 2009 at 12:32 pm

    Oh dear. Sorry Helena. My bad. It’s not an excuse but I wrote this in an intensely fumigated environment. Either that or I have the attention span of a gold fish. The truth is I grew up looking up to the likes of Christine Ockrent, Françoise Giroux, Simone Weil and Elisabeth Badinter. These extraordinary women changed the life of French women. You are very fortunate to have met one of them.

    Ps. As off today, I will make sure to read your posts until ZE end.

    Elisabeth

  • helena says:
    7th May 2009 at 6:36 pm

    No worries Elisabeth, I agree I was lucky to have met her, I listened to the tape today while writing my article, she really was great. Her story about interviewing Saddam Hussein is fabulous. It will be in the magazine a week on Saturday and I’ll post a link to it.
    ZE END!
    Hx

  • mihnas says:
    8th May 2009 at 8:38 am

    Christine Ockrent, what a “Grande Dame” ..

    and talking about the smoking french women, I’m french , women , and smoking ^^, I’m so cliché

    but a german friend of mine told me once that french women are the only one who are elegant and sexy when smoking and that was one of the reasons she stopped, it didn’t look good on her ..

  • Elisabeth Loesch says:
    8th May 2009 at 11:40 am

    I can-t wait to read your article. Keep up the good work. You are indeed a very versatile writer.

    About the legendary thinness of French women… It might have been true in the thirties and post war years, but now, I-m not so sure. I know so many overweight ladies. If you love cassoulet and fois gras or the cuisine lyonnaise it-s hard to live up to your reputation.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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