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The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 13th February 2008

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

And then there are the strange companions. On becoming President, Sarkozy announced that he was off to a monastery to think deep thoughts about his new role, but then suddenly changed his mind and commandeered the yacht of a big businessman called Vincent Bolloré and shot off to the Mediterranean. When he went to Romania just after getting married, he left Carla behind but took with him, for no very obvious reason, her real, as opposed to registered, father, a Brazilian-based businessman called Maurizio Remmert. When he went to see the Pope before Christmas, he tried, and failed, to bring Carla, but did take along a coarse stand-up comic called Bigard. Like the Blairs, he enjoys being with rich, showbizzy, ‘bling-bling’ people. He should read Henry IV’s warning to Prince Hal about how Richard II blew his kingship by the company he kept: ‘The skipping King, he ambled up and down,/ With shallow jesters, and rash bavin wits... Enfeoff’d himself to popularity,/ That, being daily swallow’d by men’s eyes,/ They surfeited with honey, and began/ To loathe the taste of sweetness.’

If you start letting everyone into your private life, in the name of ‘openness’, you soon find you want to stop. So it was that the wedding to the lovely Carla, which, logically, should have been the most publicised ‘people’ event of all, was completely unphotographed. Next month’s state visit to Britain will be a constant and unsuccessful struggle by the Elysée to prevent the media from focusing solely on the Josephine to this new Napoleon. ‘Apparently,’ announced a guest at a dinner I attended, ‘Sarko texted Cecilia a week before his marriage and said, “If you come back to me, I’ll drop Carla.”’ Who knows whether this is true? But it is the sort of thing people start to say when informality gives them permission. Henry IV again: ‘...thou hast lost thy princely privilege/ Through vile participation.’

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Once again

February 14th, 2008 11:24am

How nice it is to have a laugh again. Thank you Charles Moore. The Spectator has become rather too serious of late.

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