Paper Monitor
12:36 UK time, Tuesday, 18 December 2007
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press.
Christmas Day is still a week away but already the papers formerly known as the broadsheet quality press are having their cake and eating it.
The cause of this premature dash to the festive desert trolley? Why, French president Nicolas Sarkozy's dalliance with Italian-born, French-reared supermodel turned sultry songwriter Carla Bruni.
Talk about ticking all the boxes… big style. Politics – check; glamour – check; celebrity – check and check again thanks to Ms Bruni's extensive list of former partners. Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump to name just three.
The Guardian, Times and Telegraph give the story page 3 billing, but for the Independent that clearly is just throwing it away. It constructs a two-page feature based on the "life and loves of Carla Bruni", and ladles it on with some front-page billing.
But this is about much more than a pair of cheekbones that could shift several thousand additional copies at 500 yards. That would be an insult to the Indy's readership.
It's about intellectuals – look, there's a picture of Bruni with French philosopher Raphael Enthoven (you know… the former son-in-law of that other French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy) and there's Ms Bruni's reminiscence from an earlier interview with the Indy of how, in the company of other models, she used to read Dostoyevsky shielded by a copy of Elle or Vogue. (Your two minutes on Crime and Punishment, Ms Bruni, starts now...)
It's about Ms Bruni's broad cultural tastes – from the Clash to von Karajan and how here left-wing politics might jar with M Sarkozy's more right-of-centre philosophies.
Paper Monitor can't help thinking how very Gallic this all is, and how unlikely it would be to see a Bruni-esque sort on the arm of a British prime minister. Had Gordon stayed single only to hook up with a British singer/model, who might it have been… Victoria Beckham?
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