Read
Charles Bremner's weblog
The mistress of the French President is about to have an illegitimate child
and his glamorous, moody wife is turning up part-time in the Elysée Palace
only to keep up appearances. The sexy Socialist who lost the election has
dumped the partner who is also her boss and is an item with a bestselling
novelist. If you dip into the internet or listen at French tables, you’ll
know that this is the gossip on Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, the pair
who became global celebrities with their riveting electoral duel in the
spring.
The tales are, of course, invention. In Britain and other countries with
intrusive media, they would be checked and given credence or not. In France,
the rumour machine is red-hot for two reasons. The country is fascinated
with the two dysfunctional couples at the summit of public life and
imagination is running riot, thanks to the secrecy that still shrouds the
lives of the governing classes. This is amplified by suggestions that
Sarkozy puts pressure on journalists and intervenes with his media-owning
friends to kill stories.
A scriptwriter could hardly improve on the true ingredients of the mix of The
West Wing and Wisteria Lane that is playing out on the Seine. In the Elysée,
we have Sarko, a 52-year-old politician of Napoleonic energy and stature,
who has achieved his dream of power. Cécilia, 49, is his rebellious wife,
underwhelmed by her new role as Première Dame de France.
Mrs Sarkozy, a tall, one-time model, stole the show in a cream Prada dress at
the inauguration of her husband. Surrounded by her three children, she
radiated unease as the new head of state visibly sought to earn her favour.
She flinched when he stroked her cheek and scowled through much of his
coronation. France knows that Cécilia, who disappears for weeks from public
view, returned to Nicolas 18 months ago after a fling with Richard Attias,
an events organiser. A cover story on that cost Alain Genestar, the editor
of Paris Match magazine, his job last year. Match’s owner is Arnaud
Lagardère, the tycoon friend whom Sarkozy calls his “brother”.
Match is now feeding readers breathless Hello!-style features on the
supposedly blissful new first family. France actually knows little about the
couple except that Sarkozy dotes on Cécilia, his second wife, and that they
move in a glitzy circle of showbiz stars and billionaires. In a book last
year, Sarko called Cécilia the woman “who is part of me” and said that her
nine-month desertion was the most painful time of his life. Sarkozy’s own
aventure at the time with Anne Fulda, a Le Figarojournalist, received only
oblique mention.
Over on the Left Bank at the Socialist Party, we have witnessed the wreck of a
political and domestic partnership: François Hollande, 52, the Socialist
leader, and Royal, 53, the mother of his four children and the party junior
who trampled over him to the presidential nomination. Humiliated and heading
for resignation, Hollande feuded publicly with Royal last week after they
clashed on strategy in the aftermath of the rout in the first round of
parliamentary elections. Royal wants the leadership but colleagues are
gunning for both. “I have had enough of political life and especially that
of my party hinging on the life of one couple,” Manuel Valls, a rising
Socialist star, said on television.
During the campaign, media complicity and the old taboo over private life
averted the scrutiny that elsewhere would have been applied to such an
extraordinary conjugal drama. But the lid was partially lifted in a book by
two Le Monde journalists that has been No 1 bestseller. In La Femme Fatale,
Raphaëlle Bacqué and Ariane Chemin say that the trigger for Royal’s decision
to run against her partner was her anger over his dalliance with a
journalist on Paris Match, though the couple still officially live together
in the suburb of Boulogne.
The couple have joined to sue Bacqué and Chemin for breach of privacy and
libel, though they have not sought a recall of the book. One of the breaches
they cite is a mention of the jaw surgery that Royal underwent to resculpt
her looks before the campaign. This has been reported in The Times and
elsewhere outside France, but has been deemed unfit for publication at home.
In a parallel action, lawyers for Marc Lévy, a London-based writer who is one
of France’s publishing stars, have demanded retractions from internet sites
that have reported that he is involved with Royal. “This unfounded rumour
about the private lives of my clients. . . is based on strictly nothing . .
.” said a letter from William Bourdon, the lawyer for Lévy and his partner.
Legal threats are unlikely to quash the virtual soap opera of the Royal and
Sarkozy households. Gossip about French rulers has always defied censorship
and taboo. Scurrilous tales of ruler’s wives and sexual orgies were
deliberately circulated for political ends about Marie Antoinette in the
1780s and Claude Pompidou, wife of the President, in the early 1970s.
Nowadays, the internet and celebrity culture are breaching the palace walls. A
president could no longer count on the protection enjoyed by the late
François Mitterrand to keep at state expense a second household, with Anne
Pingeot, his mistress, and Mazarine, their daughter. But the old tradition
is far from over. Sarkozy, for all his claims to transparency, is fighting a
rearguard action to discourage curiosity. When Le Journal du Dimanche
discovered that Cécilia had not voted for her husband in the presidential
run-off, it was ordered to spike the story by Sarko’s chum Lagardère, its
owner. The story still leaked, but it was not reported by the chief news
source, Tf1 television. Only when Mrs Sarkozy voted were viewers treated to
a fleeting reference to her absence last time. Tf1 is owned by Martin
Bouygues, another of Sarkozy’s close friends.
The secrets d'alcove of the elite are also still protected by tradition and
the privacy law. While savouring gossip, the French pride themselves on a
morally superior regard for privacy. Elle published a poll this week that
found that 85 per cent of the French believe that the Sarkozys’ private life
should stay secret. “Contrary to the United States or Great Britain, there
persists a French cultural exception in which private life is respected,”
concluded Thierry Vedel, of the Paris Sciences-Po institute. The poll also
showed strong approval for the première dame. Ninety-two per cent said it
was right that she should occupy herself with “independent activities”.
While their journalists revel in the gossip, the main media subscribe to the
sanctity of private life. “News stops at the bedroom door,” says Claude
Angeli, boss of Le Canard Enchaîné, the investigative weekly.
Many editors are worried about being dragged into British-style scrutiny of
their leaders’ love-lives, torn between the old restraint and the pressures
to join la people-isation – French for celebrity culture. I have twice been
asked on TV whether France seems destined to follow the “Anglo-Saxon” world
down this unsavoury path. Not yet. The Sarkozys and the Socialist first
couple can sleep easy, but not for long.
