Carla fever

What’s with the national obsession with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy ? Sure she’s easier on the eye than the queen or Camilla, but then let’s face it that’s setting the bar pretty low.

The press seem to be whipping themselves in to a frenzy that she’s the next Lady Di / Jackie Onasis / Queen Of Hearts. But apart from being photogenic, what else is there to say about her ? Well she certainly didn’t let her professed left-wing sympathies get in the way of becoming the missus of a French tory leader (apparently she supported Sarkozy’s socialist rival Segone Royal, and she's been linked with former socialist premier Laurent Fabius).

Coming from one of Italy’s wealthiest families, and having been a top earning supermodel you couldn’t really call her a gold-digger, but from her impressive list of famous ex’s she is some sort of power-digger: Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, Kevin Costner and Donald Trump. For all her left-bank chic there's not too many struggling artists or impoverished intellectuals there. One story going around relates to her having seen Sarkozy on TV and saying "I want to have a man who has nuclear power." Nice. Rather more WAG than Simone de Beauvoir.

But the most telling image of the visit is not of Carla in one of her Dior suits – it’s this shot of her feet alongside Sarkozy's. Never trust a short bloke who wears high heels to compensate. Even Napoleon didn’t do that.