Sur les liaisons dangereuses…

In the spirit of not wanting this blog to be a simply concerned with gnats, I thought I’d write a bit about the story that has been interesting me ever-so-slightly-more than the Trumpgate yawn - According to the French press, Nicolas Sarkozy has only gone and got himself hitched to the Franco-Italian top-modèle Carla Bruni, with the distinct possibility that there may be a bun in the oven…

It is obviously a story that has got the UK press into as much of a lather as their neighbours from across la Manche, and has allowed even the broadsheets to revert to the default frog-bashing, while simultaneously getting a good wee bit of gossip on to the hard news pages – This after a good long campaign of being wee Sarko’s best friend, due to his insistence of a rupture with the cosy étatist consensus of post-War French politics, in order to turn the dysfunctional héxagone into some sort of Nouvelle Angleterre.

I will stop dropping in these French words, but first let me declare an interest – while living in France I did buy Miss Bruni-Tedeschi’s first album Quelqu’un m’a dit, as did many other people, and I must say I did enjoy it even if there was a slight whiff of fromage about it. I was astonished to hear the news in December that someone with such impeccable bobo (that would be a bourgeois-bohème to me or you,I couldn’t help dropping another one in) credentials could ever countenance stepping out with him…I was also almost pleased for Sarko, in a kind of ‘get-in-there-my-son’ type of way, for we do like a good bit of gossip every now and then. It really is quite an amazing story, and this illegitimate scion of a rather posh Italian family is not your typical political WAG . Here follows a rough translation of the second song off Quelqu’un m’a dit, ‘Raphaël’ (an excerpt of which can be found here)


Raphaël, Il a l'air d'un ange, mais c'est un diable de l'amour,
Du bout des hanches et de son regard de velours,
Quand il se penche, quand il se penche, mes nuits sont blanches…

Raphaël, seems like an angel, but he’s a devil between the sheets,
With the use of his hips and his soft eyes,
When he gets close, When he gets close, I stay up all night…


Hardly something you’d find coming out of the mouth of Sarah MacAuley now is it? The Raphaël of the title is, you may already know, the father of her infant son, and one of those celebrity – philosophers the French seem so fond of (and indeed do put on the telly on Friday and Saturday nights at the same time we have Jonathan Ross). The two met while she was having it away with his old man, the even more famous celeb philo (and journalist, among many other things), Jean-Paul Enthoven. Now, I just so happens that M.Enthoven Jr was at the time married to Justine Lévy, an author, intellectual, and daughter of yet another superstar philosopher, (in fact, possibly the biggest, he’s even famous here, well I’ve heard of him at least.) Bernard-Henri Lévy. Now Mme Lévy responded by writing a best seller about it. Its not the only time she’s managed to dig her nails into another woman’s husband – her and Jerry Hall apparently had a set-to once upon a time over her relationship with Mick Jagger. There are others, and these are well documented, including Eric Clapton, and Laurent Fabius, the former French PM, and Socialist éléphant.



Now, I must stop myself from getting all Glenda Slagg here, and apologies if you’ve heard it all before, but this collision of politics and pop-culture actually begs a very important question: should we really care what our politicians get up to behind closed doors? Now, obviously, Sarkozy has conducted most of his relationship with the popstrel in the full glare of publicity, at Disneyland, and on holiday in the Middle East. For many French commentators, with whom I’m inclined to agree, it marks a sad end to the days of mutual respect and reverence between the French press and the office of the President. We all know about Mitterand’s daughter, and Chirac’s many mistresses, but only after it has all happened. French journos chose not to make anything of it, because it didn’t really matter – the private and the public are two very distinct things, which need not impact on one another. The sixth President of the Fifth Republic has taken it upon himself to throw open the doors of the Elysée Palace, getting himself much cover space in the process in the likes of Voici, Choc, VSD and Paris Match, which before all this had to exist on a steady diet of the same gossip we get from our very own Royal Family.

To bring things a little closer to home, did it really matter if Jack McConnell played away from home before becoming First Minister? (although the fact that big Brigit did have two weans with a 70's rock star is as close a thing to the Sarkozy-Bruni story we may ever get) I think not. A popbitch reader like myself can’t help but read it and be enthralled, but I can’t say it really affected his leadership, although he couldn’t have got much worse. In knowing more than we need really know about the lifestyles of our elected members, we get distracted from the issues that really do matter, or so some would have us believe à propos de Sarko. His approval rating has plummeted 10% in the last two months, and all is not going well with his fabled reform plans, which is no bad thing really.


And so, while I will continue you be engrossed by any whiff of a sex scandal in our own far corner of Europe (and that, I must say, includes those involving fellow gnats), it is a sad day indeed when the French stoop to our level. Though, having given you a very brief synopsis of the Sarko-Carla love, well it must be love-dodecahedron once you factor in Cécilia and all the others, we can only marvel at what would be revealed should the French press ever be given free reign over their celebs.


A long first post indeed, but I could go on for ages more, I tell you!