In an interview with the magazine Elle, she says that she has defeated President Chirac’s attempts to stop her going out on the town. In the latest in a long line of digs at M Chirac, she tells Elle: “I go out a lot and my husband grumbles about it because, as you know, he likes me to clock-in with him. But me, I’m a free agent.”

Mme Chirac says that she enjoys watching pop concerts and plays in Paris while the French leader stays at home in the Elysée Palace. She adds: “Unlike my husband, I like going out at night.”

Mme Chirac’s comments come as she attempts to follow Hillary Clinton’s example and step out of the shadows to forge her own political career. A councillor in the Corrèze department of central France since 1979, she is said to want to run for the French Senate in elections later this year.

Although Mme Chirac does not share Mrs Clinton’s ambition to succeed her husband, it is a testimony to the transformation of her image that she would be a credible candidate for the Senate. When M Chirac became President in 1995, she was ridiculed as a fuddy-duddy figure who would be best kept out of the limelight. Yet through charity work and carefully crafted public interventions, she has become popular, so much so that centre-right politicians are almost as keen to be seen with her as with her husband.

She is reputed to be an astute politician in her own right and M Chirac says she was the only person to warn him that Jean-Marie Le Pen, that the National Front leader, would get into the presidential election run-off in 2002.

M and Mme Chirac’s relationship also appears to have changed beyond recognition over the past decade. In 1996, she told an interviewer that M Chirac banned her from talking while he watched football on the television. At the time, she seemed happy to obey him and said: “I let the husband stand in front. It is he who talks and he who decides.” But she has liberated herself since then.

She was born into an old aristocratic family and is at pains to show that she is in touch with ordinary people, telling the magazine that she has been to see rock concerts.

“A month ago, I even went to Virgin on the Champs Élysées to buy a CD by Lorie,” she said in one of her more unexpected remarks. Lorie is a French teenybopper whose records are mostly bought by girls under 16. At the age of 70, Mme Chirac must be among her oldest fans.

The President’s wife says that she likes Chanel and Dior and adds: “It’s important to renew your wardrobe. But I don’t spend my life in haute couture. I’m a hard worker.”

Nicknamed “The Tortoise” by her husband, she says that she likes to take her time in the morning, whereas M Chirac throws himself into the day.

“I’ve never been an early riser. I’m not in a good mood as long as I have not drunk my tea. I’m a slow person, me. My husband is the opposite. He’s in good form straight away. He moves around. He turns on all the radios at the same time. So I make my escape and I leave him to drink his coffee while I go about my business.”

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