Valerie Trierweiler tried to ban media from publishing her beach photos

London, August 15 (ANI): French First Lady Valerie Trierweiler had tried to ban the media from publishing a photo of her wearing a bikini, it emerged on Tuesday.

The 47-year-old employed a team of lawyers to issue warnings and threats about possible court action, to the publishers who did not adhere to her request.

This is despite the fact that Trierweiler is a staff writer for Paris Match, France's leading celebrity magazine.

Paris Match is full of pictures of public figures on the beach every week, but Trierweiler objected to other publications showing a swim she enjoyed with her president boyfriend earlier this month.

"She didn't like the pictures so wanted them banned," the Daily Mail quoted a Paris legal source close to the case, as saying.

"Faxes were sent to editors, with lawyers threatening all kinds of measures for non-compliance," the source said.

At the time many believed that President Francois Hollande had staged the 'shorts and bikini' photo-shoot to prove that was still 'very much in love' with his girlfriend, despite her being blamed for trying to wreck his ex Segolene Royal's political career.

Waiting photographers were astonished to see the couple splashing around on a beach close to the palatial Fort Bregancon, on the French Riviera.

The couple have been trying to play down speculation that the 58-year-old had threatened to dump his live-in lover after she tweeted her support for a candidate standing in parliamentary elections against Royal, the mother of the president's four children.

Royal lost the election, and blamed Trierweiler for stabbing her in the back.

The scandal led Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault to tell Ms Trierweiler that

The beach photo shoot appeared on the front page of a number of Paris magazines, including VSD, which later carried an editorial confirming that Trierweiler had indeed send a legal 'intervention'.

All the affected publications, including Voici, have pledged to fight any attempts by Trierweiler to muzzle the media. (ANI)