The story of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni’s cleavage

France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cup of woes runneth over. After suffering a succession of blows last week, a new book written by one of his former advisers alleges that Mr Sarkozy allegedly bragged about his wife Carla Bruni’s breasts during a Cabinet meeting.

According to Patrick Buisson’s book, Sarkozy went into raptures about his wife’s chest and invited his ministers to do likewise. Buisson writes that Sarkozy also told his inner circle: “I know I’m the poor man’s Tom Cruise.”

Buisson was once one of Mr Sarkozy’s most trusted aides but fell out of favour when Mr Sarkozy lost the presidency to Francois Hollande after just one term in 2012.

Buisson’s memoir, La Cause du Peuple (The People’s Cause), has landed in the middle of ex-President’s campaign to return to the Elysee Palace. The former President’s aides have condemned the book as a spiteful act of betrayal, and Sarkozy, who won £8,700 in damages from Buisson for secretly taping him during his presidency, has refused to comment on it.

Buisson’s book depicts Sarkozy, 61, as a shallow narcissist who sold “a Ponzi pyramid scheme” of power and deluded himself that his love life enchanted the public.

But Buisson writes that voters did not react well to President Sarkozy’s relationship with Bruni — who had previously dated Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton — and saw it “as phallic triumphalism... exulting in the power of having a trophy wife on his arm”.

Buisson brands the Sarkozy-Bruni marriage as immature, undignified and infantile.

Last week, two of his former security officials, Bernard Squarcini and Christian Flaesch, were placed under judicial examination after allegations of influence peddling.

Mr Sarkozy’s aides dismissed the story as bogus.