Paris (AFP)

Roselyne Bachelot is a former minister of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, and a music enthusiast who returned to politics at 73 by becoming Minister of Culture on Monday, after a long parenthesis in the media since 2012.

This feminist on the right, lively, atypical and sometimes blundering, has already occupied three times the head of a ministry, had turned the page of politics after the defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy, animating chronicles on D8, RTL or RMC.

"We are united by music, culture", she affirmed the evening of the appointment of Jean Castex as Prime Minister, welcoming the arrival of a "man of culture".

This piano lover (whom she has practiced since the age of 3 and a half) describes herself as a "crazy about opera". "I always dreamed of being Maria Callas", declared in 2012 to the JDD one who said "capable of making a round trip Paris-New York of a few hours to listen to a work at the Metropolitan Opera".

Far from political radar, the former Minister of Health saw his rating go up when the coronavirus epidemic rehabilitated this precautionary principle which had won him so much criticism in 2009, because of his management of the flu pandemic Against which she had ordered a very large quantity of vaccines.

"She has the grip, the muscles necessary for the complicated discussions that are going to take place on intermittent workers, on the aftermath of the crisis," says her childhood friend Christophe Girard, deputy mayor of Paris.

It takes more to unseat this former MP, famous for her communicative laughter and her shocking formulas - who had summed up her vision of political life in the title of her book "The fight is a party" in 2006.

A fight waged sometimes against the tide of her political family, especially in 1998 when she supported the PACS. In June 1999, she participated in gay pride.

"I am a woman of the right and I believe that it is from confrontation that consensus can be born," she said in 2012.

Born on December 24, 1946 in Nevers, this brilliant student remembers having been an "undisciplined, rebellious and protesting spirit" during her schooling at the strict La Retraite-Sacré-Coeur college in Angers.

- Parity -

In politics, she followed the path traced by her father Jean Narquin, a former resistance fighter, a grunt of Gaullism, a deputy, a figure in Maine-et-Loire.

General counselor (RPR) of this department from 1982 to 1988, this doctor of pharmacy then inherits the paternal district.

Spokesperson for Jacques Chirac's presidential campaign, she was appointed in 2002 to the Ministry of Ecology where she was criticized by her colleagues who, in private, repeatedly pointed out "blunders".

Landed in 2004, the Chiraquienne rallied Nicolas Sarkozy who made him his Minister of Health and Sports (2007-2010) then Solidarities (2010-2012).

In Sports, she does not hesitate to go to the Council of Ministers in pink Crocs to celebrate the 40 French medals at the Olympic Games. Two years later she condemned the "disaster" of the Blues who refused to train at the South African World Cup, vilifying "a team from France where immature bosses command frightened kids".

The year 2012 marks a political break for Roselyne Bachelot, criticized in her camp for having called for an "inventory" of the electoral failure of Nicolas Sarkozy.

She became co-host of "Grand 8" on D8 (now C8, Canal + group), then was recruited by iTélé (now CNews) in 2013. Since 2017, she has been running a show on LCI.

On the radio side, she made her first steps on Europe 1 in 2014 with Cyril Hanouna, participated in Laurent Ruquier's Grosses Têtes on RTL in 2015, then in 2016 presented his own show on RMC, "100% Bachelot".

This ardent defender of parity in politics, who deplores the fact that women's voices are "systematically devalued", made a remarkable foray into the theater in 2018 during a charity performance of "Vagina Monologues" with Myriam El Khomri and Marlène Schiappa.

© 2020 AFP