Later ... With Jools Holland returned for its 33rd series last night. There may have been a more toe-curling television moment this year, but, frankly, I doubt it.

Holland himself is more oily than Saudi Arabia at the best of times. When confronted by Carla Bruni a former supermodel - and, lest we forget, a supermodel who numbers Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton among her many exes - he turned into a gibbering, pubescent wreck.

Moreover, as Holland reminded us twice in the first two minutes, she is also "the first lady of France". The bottom line is that were not Carla Bruni married to little Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of western Europe's third most important state (or fourth if the Spanish are finally getting their act together post-Armada), the vapid supper club plod which took her current album, Comme Si De Rien N'Etait (As If Nothing Happened), to Number 58 in the British charts would not have been allowed through Later's usually discerning doors in a month of dimanches.

That nice Dior outfit she wore when flirting with Prince Philip in March and Vanity Fair's ludicrous and vaguely offensive coverline "Carla Bruni: The New Jackie O?" suggested that the world stage is hers for the first time since the 40-year-old retired from modelling in 1997. Her music, though, struggles for any kind of stage. In France, her album of 2002, Quelqu'un Ma'a Dit (Someone Told Me) had sold over a million; Comme Si De Rien N'Etait has sold barely a tenth of that. It reached 21 in her native Italy and 195 in the United States.

Perhaps in homage to Britain's own first lady, Sarah Brown, Bruni dressed frumpily to perch upon a stool and sing Tu Es Ma Came (You Are My Drug), backed by an acoustic guitarist and double bassist.

It was the sort of thing you might hear in the lobby of a mid-market Marseilles hotel.

Holland ignored Metallica and Kings Of Leon to interview Bruni. After probing her with such far from Paxmanesque questions as "what kind of music do you listen to?" (Bob Dylan, apparently) and, coy as the most gauche teenager, he mumbled "maybe I'm being forwards here, but you've been in love many times..." Sat at a superfluous piano, she fluttered her lovely eyelashes and asked him, "Have you ever been in that situation?"

"I am now," he gushed, perhaps to the surprise of the current Mrs Holland. And a nation turned over to CSI:NY.