President Sarkozy has not yet presented Carla Bruni, his new fiancée, to his mother but the singer-model has already moved into the Élysée Palace and is distracting him from his work.

That was the latest episode of “le Sarko Show” yesterday as France digested with little enthusiasm Mr Sarkozy's lovestruck announcement of likely nuptuals before the world's media. Opponents perceived the President's confirmation of his new romance in a televised press conference on Tuesday as an unseemly diversion from matters of state.

Ms Bruni, 39, who swept the newly divorced President off his feet at a Paris dinner party on November 23, has taken up residence in the palace and has a room assigned for her song-writing, according to le Parisien newspaper.

The lightning romance has transformed Super-Sarko, who threw himself grimly into his work after Cécilia Sarkozy left him in October, a member of his staff told the weekly Canard Enchaîné yesterday. “He laughs over the slightest thing. He likes to tell jokes and dirty stories,” they said.

François Fillon, the Prime Minister, is worried that Ms Bruni has turned Mr Sarkozy's head, le Canard said. “When you talk to the President, he doesn't always listen,” Mr Fillon was quoted as saying. “He cancels meetings, which is not like him. I wonder how all this is going to end.”

This was echoed by a new book, which said that Ms Bruni, whom the French media call a “man-eater”, had already taken control of the head of state's diary, “going as far as deciding who must be invited and who must be excluded from certain dinners at the Élysée”.

“The Minister of Justice, Rachida Dati ... appears to be the first victim of Carla Bruni,” wrote Michael Darmon and Yves Derai in Ruptures, a book on Cécilia Sarkozy's break-up with the President last autumn. Ms Dati, 42, the most glamorous figure in the Cabinet, is a close friend of the former Mrs Sarkozy as well as a confidante of the President.

Andrée Sarkozy, who advised her son last month not to remarry, said that Nicolas had not yet told her of a wedding. “I am very happy if my son is happy,” she said. “I don't listen to the radio ... I am waiting for Nicolas to fill me in,” she told Point de Vue magazine.

The potential first mother-in-law, Marisa Borini, shares none of Mrs Sarkozy's reserve and has happily talked in public of her daughter's future as Première Dame de France. “Carla is living a real love story and I think she would make a real pair with Nicolas,” said Ms Borini, a musician and actress. “I think that the President of the Republic has not just seen the beautiful woman in her. He greatly respects her artistic side.”

The authors of Ruptures put a different gloss on the intentions of the former supermodel, who said last year that she could never be monogamous.

A “close friend” of Ms Bruni told them that, pushing 40, she had decided to put aside her life as a seductress. After the flop of her second album of songs last year she had realised that “she would be perfect for the job of first lady,” they wrote. The book, which is to be published tomorrow, amplifies Mr Sarkozy's image as a politician who was in thrall to his glamorous wife and deeply wounded by her departure.

Long-term Sarko-watchers concur that the President has moved with haste to conquer another high-status woman, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Cécilia, even down to the name starting in C and ending in A.

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