As an opening gambit, it was pure conversational Viagra and a welcome change from the cold, dead-eyed greetings you usually get from actresses, models and TV starlets. Although perhaps not quite the brand of etiquette you'd expect from a woman who may well become France's first lady. But that's how Carla Bruni, who appears to be the new wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, decided to present herself to me not that long ago when I encountered her at her home, a grand, shabby-chic apartment in a fashionable Paris arrondissement. Carla, naked from the waist up, was having her make-up done at the time - I was interviewing her for a glossy magazine - and seemed only vaguely embarrassed by her evidently chilly state of undress. Every now and then she would flirt with propriety, employing one of the passing Siamese cats Mitzy and Betty, if memory serves as a purring modesty blanket. Displaying a talent that would later see her becoming France's favourite folky chanteuse, I remember she strummed away and sang a few bars of, first, Far Away Eyes and, then, Wild Horses.