What do you think of this accent?

I thought overall it was a pretty good accent. All he needs to do is work on not slipping into English with words that sound similar, and work on a couple of vowel sounds like "é". These two make him sound very Englishy overall, but it's not actually a big problem, or a difficult one to fix.

I think it's more than that. A large amount of the "English" sound comes from the fact that he still accentuates like an English or German person would, eg. "qui a passioné le monde entier." That one's easy to spot, but it's pervasive, and just not at all French. I think it's even more notable than some of his dodgy vowels. Likewise, he leaves far too much time between words, and varies his pitch too much, without descending quite far enough at the end of sentences. These are the same faults I make, along with a couple of vowel sounds (I'll flatter myself that mine aren't as prominent as Blair's, and it's still obvious I'm foreign, but people can't tell if I'm German or English -- his accent is definitely English). The vowels are easy enough to correct, but the whole intonation and rhythm side is not, especially when reading aloud (and I think he's reading from an autocue).

I suppose it's a decent enough attempt; presumably he had this prepared, or at least looked over, by a French speaker in advance, so I expect he's been coached in the accent. It's an absolute bastard to get perfect, especially the intonation/accentuation aspect though, which is really counter-intuitive for English native speakers.

Hmm, it's difficult for me to comment. That kind of accentuation has always come naturally for me (but then I started learning French at an early age, and even if I didn't pick much up, it gave me a decent accent). You're right, his sense of sentence rhythm is awful - this is kind of what I was hinting at when I said "slipping into English", e.g. coopérer, which became "co-op-ray" - because at times he's just speaking as if French was English with different words. But I couldn't say how easy or hard this was to correct.

I see, I kind of supposed you meant that, but you stuck on his vowels, which I think are for the most part OK, with funny ones showing through. The intonation is just everwhere. I think it's the think that people pick up last of all, and which really does distinguish certain foreigners (English, Americans, Germans, and probably Norwegian/Swedish people, but I don't know any). Italian and Spanish accents seem to have more difficulty with the vowels and consonants, even though their languages are technically closer to French -- the intonation problem is there too, but the vowels are more striking. And Chinese and Japanese accents are just amazing.

I think my accent is good, maybe not as good as a couple of other foreigners who've studied French longer than me, but better than other English/American accents I hear. I don't know how good your accent is, but if it's not quite perfect, chances are that there will still be some residue of English intonation -- maybe not enough for English people to hear immediately, but enough for natives. It's the last bit that is really, really difficult to iron out, especially if you're already a fluent speaker and have to force yourself to slow down and concentrate on rhythm. If you want to check it, get a French person to listen to you (especially if you read out loud, this exaggerates your faults) and then tell you what your idiosyncracies are. I'm doing this with a French girl who wants a perfect English accent; it's both useful and highly frustrating!

Almost certainly. Yeah, my accent's not perfect, nor am I fluent, sadly; I've never been to France and don't know any French people, which doesn't help (plus I've kinda given French up for German). But you're right, maybe I will do that if I ever meet any French people. I've certainly done this for German in the past.