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Nicolas Sarkozy’s colourful private life made headlines again in France yesterday when Carla Bruni denounced a journalist who claimed that the President planned to dump her days before their wedding.

An indignant article by Ms Bruni, 40, in Le Monde, was an attempt to close the “text affair” that has dogged the couple since a magazine website published what it said was a message from Mr Sarkozy to Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, his former wife.

Airy Routier, a veteran reporter for Le Nouvel Observateur, a leading weekly, claimed that a week before the February 2 wedding Mr Sarkozy had sent Ms Ciganer-Albéniz a text saying: “If you come back, I’ll call everything off.”

The previous Mrs Sarkozy walked out on him in October for Richard Attias, an events organiser whom she is to marry in New York on Saturday.

Furious, Mr Sarkozy took the unusual step of having Mr Routier prosecuted for forgery and the alleged text took on a life of its own, becoming the refrain to a hit song on the internet. It was two weeks before Ms Ciganer-Albéniz denied in a police interview, that she had received such a message.

Ms Bruni, who is to stay at Windsor next week as a guest of the Queen, said that the President was dropping the charges because Mr Routier had apologised. “The story of the false SMS is now closed,” said in her article.

The former model turned folk singer said she regretted that a distinguished magazine had stooped to “gutter press” level. “If great newspapers stop separating the facts from the gossip, who will do it?” she asked.

However, the affair is unlikely to die because Mr Routier insisted again that the message was indeed sent and the chief Paris prosecutor suggested that the question of its existence was immaterial. Speaking before Mr Sarkozy dropped charges, Claude Marin said: “The material question seems to me less important in this case than whether there was an intent [by Mr Routier] to cause harm,” he told Le Parisien.

Mr Routier confirmed that he had apologised but added: “I never called into question the authenticity of the SMS. I am totally firm on that point.”

Mr Sarkozy’s attempt to close the affair is part of a drive to shed his image as impulsive, self-indulgent and unstable, and he is avoiding the limelight.

The new première dame, however, has been posing for photos in celebrity magazines accompanied by gushing articles. Ms Bruni is to release a new album next month. Some of the lyrics are worrying the Élysée palace because they refer to her love life.

Ms Bruni was reported yesterday to have told President Peres of Israel last week that she did not say “cheese” when asked to smile for the camera. “I say sex”, she said, according to Le Canard Enchaîné weekly.

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