WIM Duisenberg, the European Union's nominee to be the first president of the European Central Bank (ECB), is as far from being a stereotypical banker as is possible, writes Rory Watson.

Built like a second row forward, burly and craggy faced with a shock of white hair, the outspoken Dutchman cuts a distinctive figure when set against his less flamboyant and more reticent colleagues.

He has a reputation for being stubborn and down to earth - characteristics associated with the inhabitants of the Dutch northern province of Friesland, where he was born 62 years ago, and which come in useful for central bankers trying to resist political pressure.

It is not just his physique and plain speaking which set Duisenberg apart from others in the rarefied world of top bankers. He has also had a varied career which has straddled academia, politics and high finance.

That banking experience has been on both sides of the Atlantic, in the commercial and public sector and at European level. It is a combination which has given him a breadth of insights few can match and explains why he has attracted such confidence among politicians and fellow bankers.

Armed with an economics degree, he went to work at the International Monetary Fund in 1965. In four years there, he picked up his American accent and developed his love of golf and the music of Johnny Cash. During the annual meeting of the World Bank in Madrid in 1994, he missed a meeting with Dutch bankers. They later found he had gone off instead and played 18 holes.

The Dutchman also has well-honed political antennae and is the only Socialist being put forward for the six-member executive board of the ECB. After a spell as an economics professor in Amsterdam between 1970 and 1973, he served as a Labour finance minister in the mid-seventies in the Dutch centre-left government of the day, which was struggling against the shock waves of the oil crises.

Twenty years ago his response was to promote a massive growth in public spending - just as it was in most other Western economies. That is a far cry from the rigid emphasis on reducing public expenditure and national debt which are now seen as key ingredients for the health of a single currency.

But within a few years, Duisenberg has begun to earn his reputation as a tough monetarist.

After leaving politics he joined the board of Rabobank Nederland in 1978 and four years later became the president of the independent Dutch Central Bank.

His objectives were to keep inflation under control and to stabilise the guilder by pegging it to the Deutschmark.

Even his critics would acknowledge that he succeeded in his aim and guaranteed the health of the Dutch economy, 30% of whose exports go to Germany.

But he is also realistic enough not to insist that everything is forced into a monetarist strait-jacket. He parted ways with his long-standing ally, Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer, over the 3% debt sealing for single currency membership. The latter insisted it was sacrosanct, Duisenberg was prepared to allow some flexibility.

He moved into pole position for the ECB presidency almost two years ago when he was selected by his fellow bankers to take up the presidency of the European Monetary Institute - the forerunner of the central bank - last year.

And, despite the hostility which French President Jacques Chirac has shown in recent months to his appointment, Duisenberg is now certain to take up his new post on July 1 after his bravura performance before Euro MPs in Brussels yesterday.

As he showed, he can skillfully use humour as a weapon to deflect difficult questioning and to win opponents over to his point of view.

''I call it polder humour. It is laid back and people only laugh 20 seconds later when what he has said has penetrated,'' explains a Dutch colleague.

In yesterday's public hearing, he admitted the political wheeling and dealing last weekend over his appointment had left a bad taste in his mouth.

Asked how that could be removed, he replied: ''By having a debate like today, by creating clarity and speaking loudly and clearly, by brushing your teeth and then moving on to the agenda.''

Continually pressed yesterday to promise that he would demonstrate the central bank's accountability to the European Parliament by regularly appearing before MEPs, he politely declined, explaining: ''It would mean that I would never be in Frankfurt.''

Yesterday, he made it clear he had every intention of spending most of his time in the German city running Europe's central bank and doing so if not for eight years then certainly longer than the four-year term which President Chirac thinks he has imposed on him.