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After starring in his own production as a lucky Romeo, Nicolas Sarkozy today fell victim to his former wife in a portrait of him as a selfish woman-chaser with behaviour unworthy of a French President.

Mr Sarkozy's exhibition of his private life and announcement on Tuesday of his likely marriage to Carla Bruni, a model-cum-folk singer, caught up with him in the shape of a character assassination attributed to Cécilia Ciganer.

“Nicolas is a woman chaser,” the former First Lady tells Anna Bitton, a journalist who reports her conversation in a book. “Nicolas is tight with his money...a man who loves no one, not even his children.”

Since his divorce in October, Mr Sarkozy had been behaving in a “ridiculous”, way, night-clubbing and singing karaoke until 4am with women, Ms Ciganer was quoted as saying. “He is not conducting himself like a president of the republic. He has a real behaviour problem.”

Ms Ciganer, 50, and her friends are also quoted at length on her continuing deep love for Richard Attias, the events organiser with whom she spent 2005 before returning to Mr Sarkozy.

The book, titled Cécilia, sparked an instant legal row that underlined how far Mr Sarkozy's break with the old taboos on privacy have brought soap opera to the highest level of the French state.

Lawyers for Ms Ciganer applied for an injunction to ban the book, one of three portraits of her this week, on the ground that it breached the privacy of the woman who was married to the President until October. A decision is due tomorrow morning.

The most damaging extracts are already in the press, radio and television, however. They were interpreted as a former wife's revenge and an inevitable consequence of Mr Sarkozy's breach of the decorum that has traditionally surrounded French public life. Mr Sarkozy, 52, has taken Ms Bruni, 39, on foreign trips. On Tuesday, he told France in starstruck tones that “with Carla, it's serious” and that he would likely marry the former supermodel in secret.

Ms Ciganer's lawyers did not contest in court the accuracy of the book's quotations. Jean-Yves Dupeux, one of the lawyers, told The Times that “there are many falsehoods in the book”, but that was not the legal point. “The main thing is that the remarks were made in a private and intimate setting and must not appear... If this book is not banned, it means that there is no longer a law protecting private life in France.”

Ms Bitton, who works for le Point news magazine, said that she was surprised and regretted Ms Ciganer's decision to try to block the book's release. “The book is based on the long relationship that we have developed over the years as part of my journalistic work,” she said.

Christophe Bigot, her lawyer, told the court that Ms Bitton had betrayed nobody and invented nothing. Her book was the fruit of interviews held with the former Ms Sarkozy, he said. The book had a “real political dimension” because of the events that it related.

Ms Bitton, for example, depicts Ms Ciganer's power over Mr Sarkozy's Cabinet appointments and her doubts over the loyalty to her of Rachida Dati, the glamorous young Justice Minister, who was her close friend until the divorce.

Ms Ciganer and her circle are also quoted as saying that she did not, as rumoured, leave Mr Sarkozy in 2005 because he was unfaithful. It was only after she “fell head over heels” for Mr Attias that friends told her of his long record as a Don Juan, Ms Bitton writes.

Criticism over Mr Sarkozy's “bling-bling” presidential style mounted yesterday. François Hollande, leader of the Socialist opposition, accused him of playing Louis XIV, the Sun King, confusing his person with the State and “making voyeurs of the French people, from ordinary citizens to state officials and the media”.

François Bayrou, the centrist who came third in last spring's presidential election, said that reality was catching up with Mr Sarkozy and his “boyish, childish...monarchical” style.

Discontent also mounted among judges, whom Mr Sarkozy criticises for being conservative white men. “What is the right image for us?” asked Jean-Pierre Goudon, a senior appeal court judge. “Should we give ourselves over to the demon of showbiz, voyeurism and celebrity culture?” he said to colleagues at a ceremony in Nimes.

Mr Sarkozy's side attacked the book. “We are now saying that he doesn't love his children. Can you not see where this is leading?” Roger Karoutchi, a junior minister, said on television. “This is ridiculous. We have to stop. It's getting completely out of hand.”

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