a calling card

If you describe what someone possesses or has achieved as a calling card, you mean that it gives them a lot of opportunities which they would not otherwise have had.

Some cabinet ministers, comparing their likely pension with their lifestyle, are tempted to look for jobs in the City while their present status remains a calling card.

Gary a former Trupin says Mr. Trupin used the New York magazine cover story about him as `his calling card'.

Despite the temptation to make low-budget films only as Hollywood calling cards, one director has remained true to the independent spirit, that is to making the film he wants to make.

a wild card

You describe someone or something as a wild card when they cause uncertainty, because nobody knows how they will behave or what effects they will have.

The Cossacks are the wild card in Kazakhstan. Armed and of Russian freebooters whom the tsars allowed to push Russia's frontiers outwards in return for a measure of they claim a million supporters and demand official recognition as a paramilitary force.

One wild card in the situation is the recent election of Jean a Quebecois and an ardent advocate of Canadian as the leader of the opposition Liberal Party.