It was an event of almost transcendental blingness. The Royal Gallery in the Lords is a riot of gold and stained glass, a vast room that twinkles and glistens like a giant pirate’s chest. It would be hard to top the setting for its pure flamboyance. And yet, of course, you should never underestimate the French because that, yesterday, is exactly what Nicolas Sarkozy did.

The President and his impossibly glamorous wife held the room from the moment they stepped through an arched stone doorway flanked by statues of pure gold. It is fair to say that the eyes of the 500 members of the Lords and Commons, diplomats and media types, did not immediately seek out the form of M le Président. Instead, our massed gaze settled on his wife, Carla, the former supermodel who had appeared nude in many papers that morning. We had seen her in the flesh, now we wanted to see her in the flesh, so to speak. For many it must have been disappointing to discover she was, shock, in clothes.

And not just any clothes. “Elle a changé,” gasped the French journalists behind us. Her grey dress and black coat were positively demure: this was Jackie O dressed as a nun.

The couple sat on the dais in the red leather chairs that, moments before, we had seen men in penguin suits dusting. Before them was a scene of some brutality. To their right was a gigantic oil painting of the Battle of Waterloo. To the left was another showing the Battle of Trafalgar. A theme was emerging here. The story goes that Jacques Chirac tried (in vain) to get the paintings covered up. For Mr Sarkozy, the spotlights on the paintings had been adjusted – up.

Did he care? Pfft! For the President had to come to conquer not with reason or force but with charm and, most potent of all, flattery. Nor was it just any old flattery but full-on verbal bling. His speech, all in French, filled ten single-spaced pages. I doubt if there was one rococo sentence that did not praise Britain in some way.

“It is indeed here, within these walls, that modern political life was born,” began Mr Sarkozy. “Without this, would parliamentary democracy have ever existed in the world?”

Gordon Brown, in the front row, nodded. At this point he hadn’t put on his translation headphones. Perhaps it was vanity for they do look ridiculous. But all other ministers had them on and soon Mr Brown joined them. Indeed only Nick Clegg, the polyglot Lib Dem leader, went without.

“How many invincible armadas has your nation defeated?” he gushed. “How many battles has it won which everyone thought lost?”

Then came an unexpected tribute. “France will never forget that when it was virtually wiped out, down on its knees, it was Britain who stood by us,” he said, throwing his arms around with abandonment. “She will never forget the heroic resistance of the British people without which all would have been lost.”

But after this it was back to the flatter-a-thon. At times it was almost sickly sweet. Mr Brown nodded, looking like an very important alien in earmuffs. Carla listened, head tilted in a Hepburnesque way.

It ended, as I suppose it had to: “Vive l’amitié franco-britannique. Vive le Royaume-Uni. Vive la France.” President Bling-Bling had lived up to his name, and then some.

Times Recommends

• Postman Pat moved to a high-tech sorting office
• Saatchi’s old favourites - made in China
• New teaching style gives pupils wake-up call