I'm a rotten bastard, says Sarkozy's model wife

Former French first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, has attributed her "devouring need for recognition" to the fact that she is a "bastard", born from an affair her mother had with an Italian-born Brazilian grocery magnate.

In an interview ahead of the release of a TV documentary on her singing tour in the US and France, the model-turned-singer said her obsession with "exhibiting" herself was "a part of me that is a bit rotten, alone or infantile".

Asked how she felt watching images of her concerts, she confessed that she had not done so "to avoid being too disappointed".

"I don't know where this devouring need for recognition comes from," Bruni-Sarkozy told Le Parisien newspaper.

"I think it is because I am a bastard. Otherwise I wouldn't put myself through all of this."

She is legally the daughter of Italian concert pianist Marisa Borini and industrialist and classical composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi.

However, in 2008 Bruni-Sarkozy announced that her biological father is Italian-born Brazilian grocery magnate Maurizio Remmert. He met her mother, Marisa Borini, at a concert in Turin as a 19-year-old classical guitarist, and their affair lasted six years.

Seeking to explain her constant need to be in the media spotlight - her face is currently across France on billboards sporting Bulgari jewellery - she said: "It's as if there is an inconsistency in who I am, an uncertainty of being alive that pushes me to exhibit myself.

"It's a part of me that is a bit rotten, alone or infantile that needs this."

Often accused of being a Marie-Antoinette-type figure born with a silver spoon in her mouth and blissfully unaware of the everyday concerns of the less fortunate, she said she had in fact "struggled" to succeed, and that singing and modelling had not come easy to someone who is paradoxically "shy".