Bruni Greets Journo Topless

Carla Bruni may have the press corps covering her fiancé—French President Nicolas Sarkozy—atwitter, but it can’t be said that the model keeps cards too close to her chest, reports the Daily Mail's Simon Mills, whom Bruni recently greeted with these fittingly plain words: “Sorry for being topless.” The effect on the following interview, Mills writes, was “pure conversational Viagra.”

Mills was duly smitten, but not fooled, he writes, as to her manipulative intentions: Bruni had strewn her apartment with Rolling Stones memorabilia (she was long rumored to have dated Mick Jagger, among other rockers) and intended to lull Mills into complacency—using a passing cat “as a purring modesty blanket”—so he would keep the tabloids spinning. (More Carla Bruni stories.)