London, May 31 Raphakl Enthoven, the ex-lover of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and father of her seven-year-old son, Aurilien, has joined an informal "kitchen cabinet" of left-wing advisers around Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president.

Enthoven, a philosophy professor, visits the Elysie Palace almost regularly and likes setting the world to rights in intimate gatherings with "Sarko" around the dinner table.

According to sources, Bruni, 41, talks almost daily on the telephone to Enthoven, 34, whom she met and fell in love with while dating Jean-Paul, his father, reports The Times.

Currently, Enthoven lives with Chloi Lambert, the actress with whom he had a son last year.

He is one of several left-leaning intellectuals and friends of Carla to have fallen under the spell of a president once dismissed by the left as a dangerous rightwinger. (ANI)