She has dated Sir Mick Jagger and partied with Eric Clapton. She has been wooed by Kevin Costner and dazzled Donald Trump. Now Carla Bruni, the sultry singer and model, has a new boyfriend – the French President.

The couple chose the unlikely setting of a Mickey Mouse parade at Disneyland Paris to make public their romance, two months after Nicolas Sarkozy was left by his wife, Cécilia.

There was no official word from the presidency, but the nod was given to gushing media reports of the President’s new “fairytale romance”. Their visit to Disneyland with friends was described as a private outing, but a gaggle of photographers were conveniently on hand to record it.

Mr Sarkozy appeared in public without his wedding ring for the first time yesterday. He was thought likely to take Ms Bruni, who is 4in taller than him, on an official trip to Rome on Thursday. Some, however, wondered whether Mr Sarkozy, 52, might have met his match with Ms Bruni, 39, a successful singer-composer. She was described by Libération and Le Parisien newspapers as a famous “man-eater”.

While “Super-Sarko” basked in glory for bagging a desirable celebrity, the opposition Socialists accused the President of orchestrating a soap opera to regild his image. “This looks like one more episode in the ‘Adventures of Principality of the Elysée’,” said the Socialist Party.

Colombe Pringle, editor of Point de Vue, a celebrity magazine that is publishing a cover story along with Paris Match, said that Mr Sarkozy and Ms Bruni had made themselves available to photographers. “They wanted people to know,” she said. “Otherwise, why would they have gone to Disney to look at the Mickey Mouse parade?”

Mr Sarkozy had been expected to move quickly after he announced the end of his bumpy marriage on October 18. When she left him temporarily in 2005, Mr Sarkozy was enjoying a public liaison with a journalist within weeks. Andrée Sarkozy, his mother, predicted ten days ago that he would soon have a new companion but warned him not to marry again. “I have had enough of brides,” she said.

Rumours had linked Mr Sarkozy with several celebrities, but not with Ms Bruni, a leftish Left Bank type who supported Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, in the spring presidential elections. This time it is unlikely that the former Mrs Sarkozy, 50, née Ciganer, will return as she did last year. She is spending much of her time in London, where one of her adult daughters lives, and has signed up Louis, her 11-year-old son with the President, at the French Lycée in South Kensington.

France was struck by the resemblance between Ms Bruni and the former première dame.Like Ms Ciganer, Ms Bruni is from a wealthy artistic family, but Ms Bruni has had a stellar career of her own. She was brought up in France after her father, a Turin industrialist, left Italy to escape the danger from Red Brigade terrorists in the 1970s. This year when she released her English-language album, No Promises,she spoke of her wild youth as a supermodel in the late 1980s and her reputation as the girlfriend of Sir Mick when he was married to Jerry Hall.

“I’d be proud to be known as that. It’s not like I had an affair with General Pinochet or Mussolini,” she said.

Last autumn she said that she did not change for men. “I never felt power or fame was important when you’re in love. When you have a relationship with someone, they become only a man. If they are talented, of course it’s better but, still, a man is only a man.”

Three months ago she was still talking of her life with Raphael Enthoven, a relationship that began with scandal in 2000. She was intimately close to his father, Jean-Paul, when she fell for the son, who was married to Justine Lévy, daughter of the Left Bank thinker Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Mr Sarkozy’s very public romance prompted anger from traditionalists who see it as a further slide into Americanised politics. However, the love story was the perfect counter to a stream of bad news, culminating in a disastrous visit to Paris last week by Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.

Cécilia and Carla

Cécilia

Age 50

Height 5ft 10in

Past careers Parliamentary aide, fashion model

First seen with Mr Sarkozy Her wedding to Jacques Martin. As Mayor, Mr Sarkozy performed the service

Carla

Age 39

Height 5ft 9in

Past careers Model, singer-songwriter

First seen with Mr Sarkozy Mickey Mouse parade, Disneyland Paris

Sources: Times archive, Storm model agency

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