Before she even arrived at the BBC studios, Carla Bruni’s appearance on last night’s Later with Jools Holland had NME fulminating. “Rock’n’roll is meant to be anti-authoritarian”, opined the weekly music paper. In all truth though, there isn’t anything terribly anti-authoritarian or rock'n'roll about the BBC’s flagship music show, either. And if there were, the appearance of the French first lady – a living notch on the bedposts of Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger – wouldn’t be at all out of place here.

As it turns out, she cut an elegant dash. Well, of course she did – after all, it’s a cast-iron pop rule that an attractive French woman in a brown Yves St Laurent two-piece trouser suit can sing today’s FTSE index while a double bass plods lugubriously in the background, and as long as she does it in French, the results are difficult to resist.

Last night, for the pre-recorded segment of the show (to be broadcast on Friday) Bruni cosied up to Jools and plumped for Bessie Smith’s Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out – a brave choice of song bearing in mind the singer who popularised it. But with ten recording years to draw on, Bruni is a pretty assured customer when it comes to imposing herself on her chosen material. Technically, it's not the strongest of voices, but reminiscent of Francoise Hardy and Jane Birkin, Bruni's singing tones use a certain wavering vulnerability to good effect.

Without Holland, she tackled L’Amoureuse, – one of the prettiest songs from her new album Comme Si De Rien N’Etait. This was the song she says had lain unfinished until Nicolas and she attended the fateful dinner party that brought them together. “Would I have finished it if I hadn’t fallen in love?” she pondered rhetorically in a recent interview, possibly biting on her little finger whilst rolling her eyes up to the heavens.

During the live segment of the show, Bruni dispensed a sultry Tu Es Ma Came to a stripped down Hot Club de Paris-style accompaniment. Lest we forget, this was the song that elicited a formal response from the Colombian Government for referencing a love “more deadly than Afghan heroin… than Colombian white.” In the White City studios, Bruni’s performance didn’t pass without at least loosening a few collars. In a normal broadcast of Later..., of course, the atmosphere is usually gladiatorial, with each artist watched by the other guests as they do their turn.

But with the French security forces nestled in cognito among the crowd, there was nothing normal about last night’s show. Far from anything gladiatorial, you were, rather put in mind of the scene in Gregory’s Girl when Dorothy scores a goal and the first people to offer their hugs and kisses to her are the opposing team. Indeed, the adoring faces of a watching Metallica and Kings of Leon rather suggested that, French security forces notwithstanding, they might do the same.

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