JW471,
I've had to talk with pilots with oygen masks. Even in French, in normal situations (fighter's pilots) that's way harder to understand.
Regarding your friend's situation, he was on frequency with Marseille, not far (less than 11 min from the field ?)from Geneva airspace. I've never worked in Marseille ACC, but I did in Reims ACC and I know that Geneva airspace is cut in slices : one level, one sector.
Maybe (only a "might be") the fastest solution for your friend was to be sent on frequency with Geneva : they have electronic devices to deal with this kind of descent through their sectors, which we don't have. The French controler would have had a huge amount of co-ordinations to make, as the Swiss one has just to push a button to know what's below.
Maybe the time between "stand by" and "contact" was used to make the right co-ordination to be sure there was no conflicting traffic during the descent. Your friend didn't hear that (that wasn't his problem then). I understand time can seem very long in this kind of situations.
Note that the Swiss controler was aware of the situation before the first contact, the French controler wasn't until it had already begun...
But I wasn't there, I could be completely mistaking and you could be absolutely right (which I don't hope).