THE FRENCH president Nicolas Sarkozy “proposed” to Carla Bruni within two hours of meeting the former model, according to a BBC report based on a new book.
Mr Sarkozy, nicknamed “Speedy”, lived up to his reputation at a blind date arranged by a friend who has now written of their first encounter. “You’ll be Marilyn to my JFK,” the president is said to have told her in front of hushed dinner party guests. He also dared her to kiss him on the lips in front of others, it is said.
The account of the November 2007 dinner party is given in a new book written by the president’s friend, advertising guru Jacques Seguela, who was asked to arrange the blind date.
Mr Seguela took notes of the coup de foudre, which has now been written up in a book, Unauthorised Autobiography, and published this week.
A friend to both, Mr Seguela, describes in detail what he calls the “unexpected game of seduction between two wild beasts” that played out in front of his guests. Mr Sarkozy was “on the prowl” for single women after his wife walked out on him shortly after he was elected president in 2007.
She was later given a lift home in the presidential car and gave Mr Sarkozy her phone number. They did not spend the night together, insists Mr Seguela.
Within minutes of arriving home, Ms Bruni is said to have called her host and declared: “Your chum – what charm, what intelligence, what attention, what energy, what seductiveness. But I find him a bit of a boor. I left him my number and he still hasn’t called.” Within seven weeks they were married.