France agog over Sarko ‘romance’

Is Nicolas Sarkozy, bachelor president of France, having an affair with the recently divorced French TV presenter Laurence Ferrari (above) - or not? While some observers in Paris are poo-pooing the romance - saying it's all been got up by British tabloids, less fearful of the country's privacy laws than the French press - others point to the precedents that make it plausible. The fact is, French male politicians have a thing for glamorous, well-groomed television anchorwomen.

Back in the spring of 2004, a rumour surfaced that cabinet minister Jean-Louis Borloo was seeing the France 2 news anchor Beatrice Schonberg. Paris Match - taking a risk with France's strict privacy laws - photographed them walking hand-in-hand in a Paris park, with the caption: "For Jean-Louis, happiness thy name is Beatrice."

The controversy that ensued included calls for Schonberg to resign; critics pointed out that in the US, journalists' ethical codes had obliged Maria Shriver to give up her job as an NBC presenter when her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was elected governor of California the previous year.

Jean-Louis and Beatrice hunkered down until the media storm had passed - and are now husband and wife.

They're not the only ones: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former finance minister who was recently appointed head of the IMF, is married to the French TV journalist Anne Sinclair; while the dashing Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, the man who co-founded Medecins sans Frontiers, has a son by his Belgian-born partner Christine Ockrent, one of French TV's most respected political journalists.

As for Sarko and Laurence, they have been "flirting for France" ever since a one-on-one live interview during his election campaign. The "incredible chemistry between them" was obvious to everyone, according to a colleague of Ferrari's at Canal Plus.

Ferrari, 41, who recently announced her divorce from Thomas Hugues, her journalist husband of 14 years, is apparently a frequent visitor to the Elysee Palace, Sarkozy's official residence in Paris. "Both are single people," said the Canal Plus source, "so they have every right to enjoy each other's company."

When Sarkozy last had an affair with a journalist - Anna Fulda of Le Figaro - she was moved from her usual beat covering his UMP party, to avoid any conflict of interest. But that was 2005 and Sarkozy was married at the time.