Nicolas Sarkozy has teased France today with rumours that he had already married Carla Bruni, his singer fiancée, amid fresh signs that the country and his own party is tiring of the President's showy ways.

Mr Sarkozy did not deny reports circulating since last week that he may already have tied the knot with Ms Bruni, 39, a former supermodel whom the newly divorced President met in late November. However François Fillon, the Prime Minister, and Ms Bruni's mother said that they knew nothing of a wedding that was said to have taken place last Thursday.

“Don't count on me to confirm or deny it,” Mr Sarkozy, 52, told reporters last night in Qatar during a tour of the Gulf. “When I have something to say, I'll say it. So stop poking into my private life.”

The President was smoking a cigar but wearing no ring as he held forth on his private life in a Doha hotel, French reporters said. He complained that he and Ms Bruni were being hounded. When he slept at Ms Bruni's Left Bank flat, four photographers staked out the door all night, he said. “I went to them and asked them, 'What's the point?'.”

“Sarko” showed his old love for publicity, saying: “I was the most talked-about interior minister when I was in that job and now I am the most talked-about president. What can I do about it?”

Mr Sarkozy's displays of affection for Ms Bruni in opulent settings and his haste to marry for a third time are partly blamed for a slump in his popularity. His approval has dropped to 45 per cent, falling for the first time below the negative rating, which has risen to 48 per cent, according to a BVA poll released last night by l'Express magazine. Sixty-six per cent say that Mr Sarkozy has failed to deliver on the central promise of his election campaign: to raise incomes for the less well-off.

“France is in crisis,” said Denis Muzet, director of the Mediascopie instutute. “The French want a crisis president and not a partying president.”

The barons of Mr Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), are worried that distaste for “Super-Sarko's” new image as “le Président Bling Bling” could translate into losses in nationwide council elections in March. Mr Sarkozy has ordered the UMP to treat the vote as a plebiscite on his presidency's first year and instructed six of his unelected cabinet ministers and aides to seek council seats in the Paris area.

While Mr Sarkozy was fanning the mystery over his marital status, people close to him dismissed the reports that he and Ms Bruni had exchanged vows before a city official at the Elysée Palace last Thursday. That was two days after he told France that “with Carla it's serious” and they were likely to marry before telling the media.

Mr Fillon said that Mr Sarkozy's busy diary last Thursday included a Franco-Spanish summit, which “hardly seems compatible with the rumours”. Marisa Bruni, the singer's mother, said that she knew nothing about a marriage. “I see her every day and she has said nothing to me.”

The French media have only alluded to rumours. One newspaper, l'Est Republicain, an eastern daily, reported apparent confirmation from an un-named friend of an unidentified witness at the supposed ceremony.

The setting for a possible Sarkozy-Bruni honeymoon was identified by the Italian media today. A room has been reserved for the couple later this month in a luxury hotel at Verona, home-town of Romeo and Juliet, according to ANSA, the Italian news agency.

After months in the shadow of the hyperenergetic President, Mr Fillon is benefitting from the backlash against Mr Sarkozy's style. “Do I look bling bling?” Mr Fillon asked the other day, contrasting himself with his boss whose love life, he said was “alas” too often on the front page.

Mr Fillon has thrown himself into the campaign for the council elections, in which the UMP risks losing control of several big cities to the Socialist Opposition.

Mr Sarkozy's stumble with his private life is fuelling a comeback by Ségolène Royal, the Socialist whom he beat to the presidency. She accused the President of lying to France with false promises and behaving like Louis XIV, the absolute ruler who turned his life into spectacle for the royal court.

“Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to make the events of his private life public, like Louis XIV,” she said. “You have the king getting up in the morning, the king's lunch...the king's bed-time and the king's mistresses,” she said. “We have to put an end to this high-handed rule.”

In another Sarkozy family episode, two men, aged 21 and 22, have been arrested on charges of making threatening telephone calls to Louis, 11, the President's only child with Cécilia Ciganer, the former first lady who left him last autumn.

The pair, one of whom works for the Orange mobile telephone company, made the calls on a telephone registered to the former Mrs Sarkozy. They told police that they were only having fun, but they face a possible jail sentence of five years for intimidation, theft and violating professional secrecy.

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