That Carla Bruni: has she no shame? (No need to reply, that was a rhetorical question). At the final meeting of the French Cabinet before les grandes vacances, Madame Sarkozy industriously handed out copies of her new CD, Comme si de rien n'etait. Gratefully and, one suspects, dutifully (who would dare refuse such generosity from the First Lady and the treasured wife of their esteemed boss?), the assembled ministers professed themselves delighted. “I had already bought it but I appreciate this friendly gesture,” said Nadine Morano, the junior Minister for Family Affairs. The Budget Minister, Eric Woerth, simply said: “I think it's great; I will listen to it quietly on holiday.” Such diplomacy.

Leaving aside the stunning solipsism of Bruni's gesture (if she had genuinely wanted to give them all a present, why not something normal, such as a nice scented candle or a tie, instead of a CD of her OWN music), it is nevertheless a stunning example from one of the world's leading exponents of the fine craft of shameless self-promotion. Meanwhile, in an empty bookstore somewhere across the Channel, Abi Titmuss, the former topless model and ex-girlfriend of TV presenter John Leslie, was demonstrating how not to do it by attracting a desultory queue of just three people (all men) to a signing of her new book, The Secret Diaries of Abigail Titmuss.

Successful self-publicists are not made; they are born. You either are - or you are not - the sort of person who will do absolutely anything, however gauche or cringe-making, to sell yourself and/or your product. In order to succeed, it is not enough to quite want your book/CD/ leisurewear range to sell well; you must really, really want it. You must be prepared to go on every spit and toss of a cable-TV talk show; you must put up with ridicule, rumour, paparazzi (not to mention sly newspaper articles denouncing your brazen behaviour). You must engineer and execute constant acts of attention-seeking; you must choose your own records on Desert Island Discs (as the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf famously did) and give away your own book at Christmas. Above all, you must remember the old showbiz adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity (unless, of course, you're a politician), and turn your every vice into a virtue.

It would be tempting to dismiss such behaviour as the product of a celebrity-obsessed modern age - and to an extent it is; but not exclusively so. Sure, Paris Hilton, once an unremarkable blonde heiress, secured worldwide exposure by appearing in a “sex tape” called One Night in Paris (she remains unremarkable, blonde and an heiress, only now she is famous for it); but back in the 18th century Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire behaved in an equivalently racy fashion for the day. She is said to have doled out kisses in exchange for votes on behalf of the Whig candidate for Westminster, Charles James Fox, in the general election of 1784. The ensuing scandal helped to ensure her place in history.

In what surely remains a supreme act of political promotion (if one excludes dictators, of course), President Mitterrand is alleged to have orchestrated his own (failed) assassination attempt in 1959 at the hands of Algerian extremists. Ever the showman, Mitterrand could not resist adding a cherry to his confection, by describing a daring escape to further ingratiate himself with the French public. Astonishingly, it worked.

Richard Nixon's decision to invite Elvis Presley to the White House in 1970 to help to launch a drugs strategy was perhaps a less successful ruse, especially given the King's later troubles. It was apparently Elvis who initiated the meeting, requesting that he be appointed a “Federal Agent-at-Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics, a move that would have been the equivalent of handing a murderer the keys to the gun cabinet. Back in the 21st century, you have to feel a little bit sorry for poor Lembit Öpik, whose much photographed relationship with a Cheeky Girl appears to have earned him much heartache - but has afforded his former fiancée far more than her fair share of media exposure.

The thing to remember about shameless self-promoters is that, like a choco-holic, they are never satisfied. The actor Tom Cruise is a classic example: here is an A-list actor who will happily shake hands with every single one of his fans at a film premiere and who will not leave until all, even the road-sweeper, have been touched by his greatness.

And so we return to the first lady of selfadvertisement. At the time of writing, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy is to be found in the pages of Vanity Fair, photographed by none other than Annie Leibovitz, on the baroque roof of the Élysée Palace in Paris. She is wearing a red sheath dress, the wind is whipping her hair attractively off her face and she wears a whimsical expression, a faraway look of longing in her eyes. Is she looking forward to coming down from the roof and getting a nice warm cardie around her slender shoulders? Or is she looking ahead to her next photo-op?

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