Bruni camp releasing own biography to scupper scathing unauthorised version

LONDON - Carla Bruni’s supporters are planning to release a positive biography of the French first lady in a bid to negate the effect of another “unauthorised” biography of the model turned singer, published yesterday, that paints a scathing picture of a vain and selfish woman who neglects her official and charitable work.

While the Elysee Palace failed in a bid to block its publication, Bruni’s supporters are making sure that the book is published tomorrow.

It is not clear that the unauthorised volume will present them with the publicity difficulties that they might have initially feared.

Although the book is entitled ‘Carla Bruni, une vie secrete’ it contains few revelations on the past, or present, life of Bruni, who married the French President in 2008.

Shocks are even less likely to abound in the authorised alternative.

Titled ‘Carla and the Ambitious’, the book was prepared with the co-operation of the first lady, and the authors, Yves Derai and Michael Darmon, focus their attention on her time as the President’s wife.

Besma Lahouri’s book, in contrast, Bruni’s volcanic love affairs with a series of celebrities, including Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, before she met President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.

It quotes an unnamed plastic surgeon as claiming that he remodelled Bruni’s nose when she was a young woman - something that she has always denied.

It suggests that the French first lady’s foundation to combats Aids is an “empty shell” and that Bruni, 42, is so neglectful of her official and charitable work that she is known in the Elysee as the “anti-Diana”.

However, the book suggests that the notion that Ms Bruni-Sarkozy is a “man-killer” who spits out her victims is quite wrong. Rather to the contrary, it says, she likes to preserve good relations with all her old boyfriends, like trophies or flies in a spider’s larder.

However, Lahouri adds nothing to the speculation earlier this year - now largely discounted - that both Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy were having tit-for-tat affairs.

The author said that she interviewed 100 people for the book and had, for legal reasons, to make many cuts and changes.

The author believes that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s principal ambition is to outshine Michelle Obama, whom she sees as the only person “able to challenge her for the title of the world’s sexiest and most glamorous first lady”.

The book suggests that the frosty relations between the French and US presidencies have largely been caused by tensions between the two women.

In pre-publication interviews, Lahouri said that her portrayal might shock many French people.

“The French don’t know their first lady, and her worries seem to them very far removed from their own,” the Independent quoted Lahouri as saying. (ANI)