Magazine airbrushes Sarkozy's 'love handles'

The magazine Paris-Match altered an agency photograph of President Nicolas Sarkozy on holiday in the US to make him look thinner, a rival magazine will report today.

Paris-Match - whose parent company is controlled by M. Sarkozy's close friend Arnaud Lagardère - air-brushed away the president's "love handles", L'Express will report.

The previous editor of Paris-Match was reportedly fired for dwelling on the problems in the Sarkozy marriage. Since then the magazine has become an unashamed fan magazine of the President and his wife, Cécilia, in recent months. Its nickname amongFrench journalists is "Pravda-Match".

In its edition of 9 August, the magazine published a photograph of President Sarkozy stripped to the waist while canoeing with his nine-year-old son, Louis. In the Match version of the photograph, M. Sarkozy's silhouette is admirably svelte. In the original Reuters photograph, published by L'Express, M. Sarkozy has a roll of fat around his waist.

Since becoming President on 16 May, M. Sarkozy, 51, has cultivated the image of a youthful, all-action leader who goes jogging every day.

Paris-Match, challenged by the rival magazine, admitted that it had tampered with the photograph. "The position of the boat exaggerated this protuberance," Paris-Match said. "When we reduced the shadows, the correction was exaggerated by the printing process."

President Sarkozy has been accused by political opponents of taking a "Berlusconi-like" hold on the French media. Several magazines and the most-watched TV channel, TF1, are owned or controlled by his friends or allies.

His two-week holiday in a luxury compound on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire was, nonetheless, something of a media disaster for the President: it emerged that the holiday was being paid for by billionaire friends; Mme Sarkozy failed to turn up for a picnic with President George Bush and family in Maine; and, at one point, M. Sarkozy jumped aboard a media launch to remonstrate with photographers who were following him and his family.

In an opinion poll to be published today in another magazine, Le Point, M. Sarkozy's popularity has dipped slightly, to 61 per cent, for the first time since the election.