| In the absence of anything new from Britney and Lindsey, this will have to do. |
Speculation that the French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cécilia are shortly to announce their divorce intensified in France last night following reports that Mrs Sarkozy was lying low abroad. The French regional newspaper L'Est Républicain wrote on its website yesterday that the couple's "separation and divorce" would be made public imminently.Quoting unnamed sources at the Elysée palace, the paper said: "Things should move pretty quickly," adding that divorce papers would be filed at a court in Nanterre, a Paris suburb.
Mr Sarkozy's spokesman David Martinon told Agence France Presse there was "no comment" from the Elysée. Mrs Sarkozy's spokeswoman also refused to answer questions.
The news weekly Le Nouvel Observateur reported that at the recent France-Georgia World Cup rugby match Mr Sarkozy, 52, confided to his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili that he might soon be single. Mr Sarkozy reportedly said: "Thankfully there is the rugby. With that you can forget all the rest."
Mrs Sarkozy, 49, has rarely been seen at her husband's side since he took office in May, leading her to be nicknamed "the invisible woman". Last week she declined to accompany her husband to Bulgaria, where she was to have received the country's top honour for helping secure the release of Bulgarian nurses imprisoned in Libya. She also turned down a rare private invitation from George Bush this summer, blaming a sore throat, before being pictured shopping the next day.
The couple, who have one son together and two children each from previous marriages, briefly separated in 2005. They kissed on the president's inauguration day in an attempt to quell rumours of a rift.