PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Ségolène Royal, darling of the French media, has turned against the country’s flourishing celebrity magazines after they published photographs of her on the Riviera in a bikini with the father of their four children.

The magazine Closer was the first to break the unwritten rule banning pictures of female politicians in their swimwear. Last week it featured Royal, the top socialist challenger for the presidency, soaking up the Mediterranean sun in a turquoise bikini and a baseball cap.

Admiring Royal’s shapely figure, Closer gushed: “To think she is 53!” She was shown using a children’s floater to bathe and to stretch her muscles in the water, “like any other woman concerned about her figure. And her figure, precisely, is impeccable”, the magazine added.

Royal, who is president of the Poitou-Charentes regional government, was also snapped laughing in the water with François Hollande, 51, the balding Socialist party chief and the father of their four children.

To compound her misery, the magazine VSD published photographs showing Royal sunbathing and swimming while Hollande, her partner of nearly 30 years, studied The History of France for Dummies.

Royal considered suing VSD for breaching strict privacy laws. Instead she had lawyers send letters of protest to both magazines.

Like her closest rival for next year’s presidential elections, the centre-right interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, she has skilfully exploited a sudden boom in “la presse people”, as celebrity magazines are known, even inviting photographers into the maternity ward after she gave birth to one of her children.

It had the desired effect. In a poll for the magazine FHM, her countrymen voted Royal the sixth sexiest woman in the world.

Marc Dolisi, VSD’s editor, said Royal and her rival had themselves to blame for the coverage. “Royal and Sarkozy have both been happy to put their private lives on display when it suited them,” he said.

Asked whether Royal had simply reaped what she had sown, an aide replied: “She believes there must always be a limit between what is authorised and what is not. And she does the authorising.”

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