Nicolas Sarkozy staged the first major rally of his re-election bid on Sunday as his former supermodel wife Carla Bruni looked on, transformed by an improbable down-to-earth makeover.
With barely nine weeks to go until the first round of France's presidential election, Sarkozy arrived at the rough-and-ready Mediterranean port city of Marseille to address 10,000 supporters who greeted him with wild cheers.
By his side was a first lady formerly more associated with Parisian glamour and jet-set resorts, now trying to re-imagine herself as an ordinary young mum and doting spouse.
Dressed in an elegant but sober black jacket and grey trousers, a warmly smiling Carla sat between chief of Sarkozy's party UMP Jean-Francois Cope and Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
Sarkozy has begun to close the gap between him and opposition Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande - and thus is coming closer to a second five-year term in the Elysee - as polling day approaches. But the right-winger still faces the prospect of a humiliating defeat.
Sunday's latest poll by LH2-Yahoo! was in line with all recent surveys, forecasting that Hollande would sweep the May 6 run-off with 55 percent to Sarkozy's 45.
The visual signals of the event were to take on a particular importance, as this was to be the first event attended by his usually glamorously aloof spouse.
Her arrival was prepared as carefully as any of the Italian-born heiress' appearances on the fashion world's catwalks in her former life before her 2007 marriage to Sarkozy and last year's birth of their daughter Giulia.
For the past week she has appeared in an apparently "stolen" video adjusting her husband's Legion of Honour medal and giving him an awkward kiss, before giving an interview in the determinedly low-brow weekly TV Magazine.
In this listings magazine, distributed free with 60 local papers nation-wide, she told of her love of popular soap operas like "Plus Belle la Vie," which is set in Marseille, and cheap and cheerful gameshows like "Fort Boyard".
In the tabloid Le Parisien and the freesheet 20 Minutes she declared meekly that she was "100 percent" behind her husband's re-election bid, as he is the "best able to keep the country on course ... and has done everything well."
"I'll accompany my husband when he needs me ... in symbolic moments, in rallies," she said, turning her back on her image as a champagne leftist and social libertarian and pledging allegiance to Sarkozy's conservatism.
Once, Paris gossips would joke about Carla's reported campaign to develop the cultural and intellectual values of her husband, whose Rolex and Rayban nouveau-riche image has proved hard to shift.
Now, she claims that thanks to him she has begun to enjoy watching reality television talent shows and football and to be learning from her husband the joys of following the Tour de France bike race.
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