A friend who is rathter pround to be a "Miss" visited friends in France recently, having just celebrated her 50th birthday. She was most upset to be called Madame rather than Mademoiselle. Apparently once an unmarried woman reaches a certain age she is called Madame out of respect, whether or not she is married. The impression she was given was - we've waited all this time for you to get married, so now we've given up on you and given you the title anyway!

I don't know if she got the wrong end of the stick - I'm sure there are experts out there - but she was quite taken aback.