My goodness gracious – what sleight of hand is Sarkozy attempting at the moment? Thriving on controversial covers for all things underhanded, he’s done it again, and all of France is in an uproar.

According to a recent announcement, every ten-year-old pupil in the grade CM2 will be ‘entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust’ from the start of the new school year in autumn.

‘Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew,’ Sarkozy said as he concluded a recent speech at a dinner for France’s Jewish community.

Hopefully this embrace of historical consciousness extends to the home. Carla’s been in a bit of hot water recently over her comparison of the tabloid coverage of their relationship to the wartime plight of the Jews. Yeah, right. Really similar. The world feels your pain.

Bruni had criticised the website of the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur on fair enough grounds, but she touched on an extremely raw nerve of French history in asking:

‘If this kind of site had existed in the war, what would have happened with the denunciation of the Jews?’

I’m in a stunned silence even as I type this. Obviously drawing personal analogies was never her strong point. Supermodel to first lady in one simple step (or three simple months)? Maybe there will be some teething issues…