Some years ago, one of Italy’s best-known journalists was summoned to a meeting with Silvio Berlusconi at the billionaire media magnate’s villa on the Riviera. Walking around the grounds, he stumbled across Veronica Lario, his boss’s (now soon-to-be ex-) wife, sunbathing nude while reading a philosophy book. Encountering Italy’s first lady in the altogether surely counts among life’s more awkward moments, but the late Indro Montanelli had made a career out of speaking truth to power. “Don’t worry,” was his infamous response. “You’re not showing me any poses I haven’t seen in the photographs your husband showed me.”
There’s no shortage of similar stories about the legendary libido and crassness of Italy’s 72-year-old prime minister. So when Lario wrote a series of open letters this spring detailing her unhappiness with her husband’s penchant for schwingy female candidates, and then announced she is seeking a divorce because of his extracurricular “consorting” with ever-younger women, there wasn’t much public sympathy for her plight. The 52-year-old former actress is, after all, Berlusconi’s second wife. And the story of their own love might have functioned as a cautionary tale. They met in 1980, when Lario was appearing in a play called The Magnificent Cuckold in Milan. Berlusconi, then married with two school-age children, tumbled head over heels while sitting in the audience. Although it’s never been clear what impressed him most—Lario’s acting, or the scene where she took off her top. For years, she was his very public mistress (Berlusconi divorced in 1986), and all three of their children were born before they finally tied the knot in 1990.
“Rock solid” is not a term that one would ever have used to describe their union. Berlusconi has always played up his satyr-like appetites. “Think of how many women there are out there who would like to go to bed with me, but don’t know it. Life is a problem of communication,” he once told reporters.
The PM’s indiscretions have kept his political and media opponents diverted for years. In 2007, Oggi magazine published photos of the septuagenarian holding hands and cuddling with “Berlusconi’s harem,” a group of five young women whom he had invited to spend Easter weekend at his lush Sardinian retreat. Last year, TV cameras caught him passing flirty notes to two of his young parliamentary deputies, Nunzia De Girolamo and Gabriella Giammanco. “Gabri, Nunzia, you look very good sitting there together. Thank you for sticking around but it is not necessary. If you have any gallants who have invited you to lunch, I authorize you to go. Many kisses both of you!!! Your Prime Minister.”
Read Full Article »