“The British press went wild.” Carla Bruni looks back on her embarrassing encounter with Charles III and Camilla.

A year after their meeting in 2007, Carla Bruni and the former president of the republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, already went to England together during an official visit. Accompanied by his new wife, the singer and model-turned-first lady, the head of government was due to meet the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II, who died in 2022, and his wife Camilla, both then the Prince and Princess of Wales. “This state visit is quite a story,” he recalled in the column Vanity Fairin the June issue.

“The very day we arrived, the British press went into a frenzy, publishing an old nude photo of me taken by Michel Kome (Swiss artist, editor’s note), which was sold at an auction for the fight against AIDS,” the translator explained Someone told me to the magazine. The portrait in question, taken in 1993, is a famous image in the work of the photographer and his muse. Carla Bruni appears standing there, completely naked, her hands hiding her penis. Faced with an onslaught of tabloids, Charles III and his wife rushed to appease their guest with an apology. “When I got off the presidential jet with my husband, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla were waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs and said, “We are very sorry for the newspapers…” he said. – He keeps it.

After the scandal of this photo, which was a little too bold for the Anglo-Saxons, the former presidential couple has fond memories of their stay in the United Kingdom. “We slept in Windsor. We arrived at the entrance to this little town, the Queen was waiting for us, there was an all-white carriage pulled by eight white horses, which I rode next to Elizabeth II,” recalled Nicolas Sarkozy on the set of the show in 2022. A large chess boardbroadcast on France 3. His wife was in another carriage, “drawn by eight black horses with the Duke of Edinburgh (Philip of Edinburgh, the Queen’s husband, who died in 2021, Editor’s note). When he came down, my heart was pounding, first with emotion, then with pride. Placing his little hat on my head, I said to myself. “We’re having breakfast at Tiffany’s, and when she starts, I’d marry her a second time.”

Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni met in November 2007 at a dinner hosted by advertising director Jacques Segela and married on February 2, 2008, fourteen years ago. A birthday that the singer and model did not hesitate to celebrate together with Nicolas Sarkozy.