Rumour has it Carla Bruni is pregnant. Should we believe it?The celebrity magazine Closerran a story last week claiming Carla Bruni, the 43-year-old wife of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is expecting a child. But so far there has been no official confirmation, and celebrity glossies don't have a good record in Paris: they falsely reported three Bruni pregnancies in as many years. That said, the first lady coyly declined an invitation to deny the rumour when asked directly on Monday. Having been beaten to the story by Closer, rival celebrity weekly Voicineeded to go one better than a presidential baby. "She's expecting twins!" the magazine yelled.
They must be talking of little else in ParisNot quite. Far from being the only topic of conversation, the story has been virtually untouched beyond the pages of a few celebrity weeklies. French journalists are reticent about encroaching on the private lives of public figures, which explains why the mainstream newspapers, as well as radio and television stations, have generally avoided mention of the rumours. But the British tabloids picked up on it, which means English readers may well know more about all of this than the average French person.
What's the evidence?Mostly circumstantial (a big, allegedly bump-concealing coat) or patently made-up (one magazine reported that an unnamed person told another unnamed person in an unnamed Parisian restaurant that it's true). Until an interview with Bruni appeared in Monday's Le Parisien. "I would love to talk, woman to woman, about my family life, my personal dreams, about the details of certain things," she said in response to a direct question about the rumours. "But in a way my lips are sealed. Not out of arrogance or out of a taste for secrecy . . . but to protect something and all the work that [my husband] does."
Why should I care about this?If you do care, you're either the sort who loves when famous people have babies or the sort whose first thought is how this will play for one of the world's most powerful men. Or perhaps both.
Ah, the political baby bounceSarkozy could badly do with one. With a presidential election just a year away, his poll ratings have been stuck at about 30 per cent for more than 12 months, and recent surveys say he would come third if the election were held today. He is loathed by a large section of the population, and polls suggest that, if the opposition breaks with its tradition of picking the wrong candidate, he could be denied a second term.
So this maybe baby is an unqualified godsend for the Élysée, I take itNot so fast. The assumption is that pictures of Nicolas and Carla cuddling a newborn baby would go a long way towards softening his public image. But Sarkozy would have to tread carefully. One of the reasons he became so unpopular was his unpresidential tendency to parade his soap-opera private life in public. He has reined himself in and become more discreet in the past year, with Bruni taking a noticeably lower profile (and seeing her approval ratings rise at the same time). Sarkozy's problem is that a view of him as a calculating strategist has taken firm hold, so the sight of the doting father posing for photos could endear him to his followers but provoke greater ire in those who have already given up on him.
