Four months ago, the former International Monetary Fund chief was paraded unshaven in handcuffs by police in New York after his arrest on charges of seeking to rape Sofitel hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo.
The contrast could not have been starker as the 62 year-old sat wearing make-up on France's TF1 channel, where he was questioned on his judicial ordeal and on economic matters.
Claire Chazal, an anchorwoman on TF1 for 20 years, is a long-standing friend of Mr Strauss-Kahn's loyal wife Anne Sinclair, who worked on the channel for years.
Miss Diallo's lawyers had said that anything less than "pointed questions on his conduct" would turn the prime-time interview into a "publicity stunt".
The tone was friendly, but Miss Chazal pulled few punches, going straight in with the killer question: what happened on the night of May 14 in Sofitel room 2806? » | Henry Samuel, in Paris | Sunday, September 18, 2011
