The French are seriously existential about their politics and object to it being turned into soap opera but Carla Bruni-Sarkozy seems to turn her life into the stuff of Days of Our Lives with effortless grace.
She gave birth to a daughter this week and while her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, was in urgent talks with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, about saving the euro, the first French presidential baby in history captured newspaper front pages.
Bruni-Sarkozy said recently she was bored by pregnancy and could not wait for a drink and cigarette but hours before her confinement a French opinion poll published suggested her husband would be trounced in elections next May by the Socialist Party's newly-elected candidate, Francois Hollande. His pressganged candidature resulted from the less-than-stylish departure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as the left's leading man following his New York misadventures.
Mindful of the French distaste for private life intruding on public life, the President has insisted his daughter, named Giulia, will be kept out of the spotlight but his wife has a moth-like attraction to publicity.
