The hyperactive President Sarkozy has kept up a breakneck pace since taking office in May. But, faced with a boatload of photographers taking pictures of his summer holiday, one thing Mr Sarkozy could not keep was his cool.

Jumping on board the offending craft after steering his own speedboat alongside, the diminutive head of state, clad only in swimming trunks and sunglasses, lost his temper as well as a little of his presidential aura.

The tantrum crowned Day 3 of Mr Sarkozy’s groundbreaking US holiday, designed in part to help to rebuild Franco-American ties strained by the Iraq war.

After a ten-week political blitzkrieg at home, “Super-Sarko” asked for peace while staying with friends at a lakefront estate in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. Owned by Michael Appe, a former Microsoft executive, it is let for $30,000 (£15,000) a week.

He won the consent from French photographers to leave him alone. But as he steered himself on to the waters of Lake Winnipesaukee, he spied a boat, outside a barrier set by police, containing two photographers, Jim Cole, of the Associated Press, and Vincent DeWitt, a freelance.

After boarding, the French President berated them and grabbed one of their cameras. “I could see that he was angry. He had the boat captain steer towards us. He then stepped on to our boat,” DeWitt said. “The President was very agitated, speaking French at a loud volume very rapidly. Everybody was quiet except for him.”

The pair asked whether any of the President’s passengers could translate. Mr Sarkozy put down the camera and a woman whom the photographers identified as his wife, Cécilia, explained his anger. The photographers said that they were not aware of the promise by French reporters not to hound him.

After the Americans promised to stop snapping for the day, Mr Sarkozy calmed down and reboarded his boat, which continued on its way escorted by a US Secret Service craft.

The outburst stoked disquiet at home over his choice of an American millionaire’s mansion for his first holiday since his election as French leader — the first time that a sitting French president has taken a holiday in the United States.

The Socialist Opposition said that it demonstrated Mr Sarkozy’s obsession with managing his image. “You can’t summon the media and then order them brutally not to do their job,” Jean Glavany, a senior Socialist, said. “This dictatorship over the media will come to a bad end.”

There was speculation on media websites yesterday that Mr Sarkozy’s anger was driven because the American pictures would show that Rachida Dati, 41, the Justice Minister and a Cabinet star, was on his speedboat. The presidential protégée and friend of the Sarkozys had previously been thought to be on the Côte d’Azur.

Accosted on his jogging outings, Mr Sarkozy has been unrepentant over what much of France sees as a provocative holiday choice. He has insisted that he had nothing to hide although he will not identify his hosts, other than saying that they are American and French friends.

The Socialists yesterday demanded their names. “We know that Mr Sarkozy likes millionaires,” the party said. “But the French people . . . have the right to know which generous donor is spending so much for our President.”

Mr Sarkozy sees nothing wrong in taking a holiday in America. “I came here because we have friends who have been coming here for years,” he said. “It’s the America we like, a true America with its forests and small towns . . . There are 900,000 French who come to America every year, and I am just one of them,” he added.

Mr Sarkozy’s team defended the President. “They are inventing controversy about his US vacation because they no longer have any ideas of their own,” said Christian Estrosi, junior Minister for Overseas Territories. “They have to spend their time trying to find fault with the President because they no longer have any values of their own.”

The most pro-American French leader for decades expects this week to visit the US President at the Bush family home at Kennebunkport, Maine, 50 miles away from Wolfeboro. Mr Sarkozy has been embarrassed by his poor language skills. “My English is very bad,” he told American reporters before reverting to French.

Despite his demands for solitude, Mr Sarkozy has been his usual garrulous self as he has made appearances around the town named after James Wolfe, the British general who routed the French in Quebec in the 18th century. The French President told inquirers that the only American on his iPod jogging playlist is Elvis Presley. The rest are French evergreens such as Johnny Hallyday.

Le Monde predicted that Mr Sarkozy would not stop talking all summer. “We thought that our omnipresent hyper-President would be absent from our screens for a while,” it said. “We were wrong.”

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