Previously on The President in Love: Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly divorced French leader, confessed to the nation that his romance with Carla Bruni, a long-legged Italian former model and folk singer with a colourful romantic past, was “serious”.

In the latest instalment: Cecilia, his former wife, has her revenge, launching a full-bore assault on her “ridiculous” former husband and the “slappers” that surround him. And, in an unexpected twist, rumours abound that Bruni will produce the presidential offspring later this year.

Coming soon: will the Queen be obliged to allot separate bedrooms to “speedy Sarko” and his inamorata? And will Cecilia find happiness with an old flame, or continue to pester the leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy for not paying her enough alimony?

In his election campaign last year, Sarkozy had promised “rupture” with the stodgy traditions of the past. Few suspected that this would mean converting the gilded Elysee Palace he inhabits into the backdrop for a star-studded soap opera.

Jacques Chirac, his predecessor, had put France into a deep slumber and the country was certainly in need of a jolt. The plain-talking, punchy Sarkozy was the equivalent of an earthquake: besides becoming an unmarried leader, the 52-year-old is also one of the youngest and, until recently at least, one of the most popular.

While previous incumbents kept loftily aloof from the grubby details of government, Sarkozy, or l’hyper-president, as he is known, has stunned his countrymen with his energetic micro-management, his perpetual policymaking, his diplomatic initiatives and reforms.

Trouble has surfaced, however, over his other side, “le President bling-bling”, as they call him, a leader fixated as much on foreign holidays and pretty women as on the need for boosting French GDP.

Questions are now being asked about whether the two can successfully coexist. Can a lovestruck president enact the reforms his country desperately needs?

In some respects, the Bruni effect has been a boon for those who work in close proximity to the leader. Love, they say, has lifted the volatile, hyperactive - and chocolate addicted - Sarkozy from the gloom into which he had sunk when Cecilia insisted on a divorce last October, when he had to have an abscess in his throat lanced.

It seems like an age ago. Sarkozy has now given the 40-year-old Bruni the space to set up a recording studio in the palace, so that she can get to work on her next album, and a heartshaped pink diamond engagement ring that is remarkably similar - some say identical - to the one he gave to Cécilia before their marriage in 1996.

To the relief of Buckingham Palace, which is playing host to the French leader and Bruni on a state visit to London in March, when they will stay at Windsor Castle, a celebrity-packed wedding seems imminent. So much so that on Friday afternoon scores of journalists waited outside the town hall in the posh 16th arrondissement of Paris where Bruni has her flat after word had it - wrongly, as it turned out - that a marriage was under way.

In the wings of the “Sarko show”, however, presidential lieutenants were glum. Forget about the “glamour bounce” they were expecting: just as the president’s love life was blossoming, his popularity ratings had withered to below 50% for the first time in his presidency. What had gone wrong?

The truth, it seemed, was that much as the French approved of his economic reforms - another poll on Friday showed overwhelming support for his latest measures, including quotas for immigrants and a minimum service in schools in case of strikes - an increasing number of them were being put off by the glittery, jetsetting lifestyle.

Nobody begrudged Sarkozy the spoils of victory. Far from it, French voters regard multiple sexual conquests as one of the perks of presidential office. What seemed increasingly irksome to the public, however, in a country renowned for its dislike of ostentation, was the way he was flaunting his good fortune.

When Sarkozy put his hand on Bruni’s bare midriff for the cameras on holiday in Egypt last week he seemed to be saying “Look at me!”, said Francois Hollande, leader of the socialist opposition. Holding it up as another example of his “rupture” with the stuffy old past, Sarkozy said that he was only doing in the open what other leaders – Hollande included – had done, hypocritically, in secret.

It also did not help, however, that the holiday came at a time when ordinary people were grumbling about rising heating costs and a dramatic decline in the purchasing power of their euros.

In addition, Jean-Marie Rouart, a member of the French Academy, the national arbiter of good taste, argued that society might be lagging behind Sarkozy’s “ultramodern conception” of political life.

“Is there not a misunderstanding,” he asked, “between a president offering transparency in power . . . and a public that still wants power to be sacred, crowned even in mystery?”

Worst of all for the traditionalists was the way in which the president was exposing himself – and the hallowed presidency, the most powerful executive post in Europe – to ridicule: a spoof, presidential new year’s greeting doing the rounds by e-mail made Bruni’s breasts into the zeros of 2008. Imagine the mockery that Sarko will have to endure if Bruni, who in the past has described herself as allergic to monogamy – others have called her a “maneater” – loses interest.

Of more immediate concern was the return to the fray last week of Cecilia, who opined: “Bruni won’t make him forget me in a hurry.”

Sarkozy’s aides had for long been dreading her wrath, and with reason. The woman was a seething cauldron of grievances against the man for whom she had sacrificed almost two decades of her life.

True, she had left him in 2005 for another man. She had returned, however, after he pleaded that he was incapable of winning the presidency without her. She relented, realising she would be blamed if his bid failed.

This extraordinary relationship was the subject of no fewer than three books last week: evidence, if any were needed, of the way in which France was junking its past and the reverence in which it once held the privacy of politicians.

Underlining that change was the court decision on Friday against Cecilia’s attempts to block distribution of the book by Anna Bitton, a former friend.

Hearing from his former wife that he has a “behavioural problem” will not make pleasant reading for Sarkozy. “He needs to be protected,” Cecilia is quoted as saying by Bitton. “He has a ridiculous side.”

There was much worse. “He leaps on girls whose names he can’t even remember,” says Cecilia. What’s more, he is “stingy” and his ex-wife wonders how she will manage on the small allowance he is paying her. She consoles herself with the thought that their son Louis, who lives with her in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly, will “not be like his sons with their €2,000 shoes” – a reference to the grown-up children from Sarkozy’s first marriage.

She also suggested that the president had no real friends: “That’s why he surrounds himself with mine.”

She was no kinder about his political party, the Gaullist UMP, which Tony Blair was addressing yesterday to show his support for Sarkozy, who wants Blair to become president of the European Union. “They’re all homos and machos,” Cecilia was quoted as saying about the best and brightest in the governing party.

More painful, however, for Sarkozy, was her references to Richard Attias, his previous love rival. “I don’t think I had ever loved anyone before him,” says Cecilia.

It was by no means certain, however, that they would all live happily ever after: despite rumours last week that a reunited Cecilia and Attias might beat Sarkozy and Bruni to the register office, Bitton’s book suggested the relationship might be on the rocks.

“He is terrorised,” Cecilia is quoted as saying of her former lover. “I humiliated him.” She adds that friends of Attias had told her to “give him time” to consider taking her back but that for the moment he does not trust her.

Sarkozy will no doubt try to shrug it all off. In spite of his amorous antics, his priority is “rupture”, not rapture. “I want to act,” he insisted the other day in front of 600 journalists, deriding the immobility of his predecessor.

In accordance with his election campaign mantra of “work more, earn more”, he has already introduced a series of reforms to curtail the special pension privileges enjoyed by many public sector workers and to make the country’s struggling universities more competitive.

However, a deteriorating, global economic situation – as well as France’s weakening export performance because of the strength of the euro – is not an encouraging context for fulfilling other electoral promises, such as an overhaul of the rigid labour market.

His efforts last year to make a start, which included tax cuts and promises of retirement-age reform that prompted a nine-day strike by public sector workers in November, have been seen by some observers as having more impact on the headlines than the economy.

The International Monetary Fund remarked that it understood the politics but not the economics of his initiatives.

His next steps will be dogged by the worsening state of the global economy and, from July, he will inevitably be distracted after France assumes the mantle of the rotating EU presidency.

But, for now, these serious matters of state are secondary in French eyes. So what next in the saga of presidential love and ambition?

The first French president to be seen sweating in public, will Sarkozy, like his friend Blair, also be the first to have a child while in office? Already rumours were swirling about Paris this weekend that the patter of little feet might soon be heard in the Elysee, if only because Bruni is on record as saying: “My dream is to have a pretty little girl that I can dress up.”

Will her wish be granted? Or will the president’s heart end up being broken by Bruni?

For all the qualms about “President bling-bling”, it was better than anything on French television. Which meant that whatever he does next, Sarko can be sure the nation is watching.

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