Will Welshwoman Penelope Fillon become the 'second lady' of France?

France's next "second lady" is likely to be a Welsh mother of five. François Fillon, the politician who is tipped to be chosen as prime minister by the president-elect, Nicolas Sarkozy, is married to a woman who comes from a small village near Abergavenny in the Welsh borders.

If M. Fillon's appointment is confirmed next week, Penelope Kathryn Fillon (née Clarke), 51, will be the first British woman to move into the Palais Matignon, the French equivalent of 10 Downing Street.

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France's "first lady" is the wife of the President but the wives of some - not all - recent prime ministers have also become public figures in their own right.

The couple met when both were working in the French defence ministry in the late 1970s. M. Fillon's brother, Pierre, an eye surgeon, later married Penelope's sister, Jane.

Mme Fillon - usually known as Penny - was brought up in the pretty village of Llanover, near Abergavenny. She was one of five children of a local solicitor, George Clarke, and his wife Gladys. Her parents are no longer alive. A keen horsewoman, Mme Fillon lives with her husband and their five children - Marie, Charles, Antoine, Edouard and Arnaud - in the Château de Beaucé, a sprawling 12th century manor house at Sablé sur Sarthe, near Le Mans, in western France.

M. Fillon, a former social affairs minister, is the senator for the area, representing M. Sarkozy's centre-right party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP).

A local journalist, Florence Loyez, said: "Mme Fillon is a very natural and unpretentious woman. She's also very clever. I think she definitely has the intelligence and discretion to be a good 'second lady' of France. She'll advise her husband well.

"She speaks perfectly fluent French but she does have a soft Welsh accent," she added.

Penny Fillon studied A- level French, among other things, at the King Henry VIII Grammar school in Avergavenny. She was described by her former French teacher, Alan Breeze, a Monmouthshire councillor, as "an outstanding student, a gifted linguist and a very thoughtful person". When Mme Fillon met her husband she was a 24-year-old law student and he was a 26-year-old parliamentary attaché. They married in June 1980 in Mme Fillon's local 17th century parish church of St Bartholomew.

A former neighbour said: "Penny's father was considered a firm pillar of the local community. They were a lovely family, but were very private."

Officials at the British embassy in Paris described Mme Fillon as "absolutely lovely", very family-orientated, "extremely loyal to Wales and proud of being Welsh".

M. Fillon, 53, is a close associate of M. Sarkozy. He is a handsome, eloquent man, regarded as more consensual and less abrasive than the president-elect, who takes office next Wednesday.

As minister for social affairs in the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin from 2002-05, M. Fillon is credited with steering a significant and overdue reform of the French pensions system through parliament. After he was fired from the government (following the rejection of the EU constitution by the French people), M. Fillon said that his reform was the "only memorable achievement" of M. Raffarin's term of office.

As M. Sarkozy's prime minister, he will run the day to day government of France and will be expected to guide a large package of economic and social reforms through parliament within 100 days. French prime ministers live and work at the Palais Matignon in Paris's seventh arrondissement, a once-aristocratic dwelling, larger than No 10 but much smaller than the President's Elysée Palace. The prime minister's wife and family do not always move into the Matignon but she is expected to be present for formal receptions.