What is one to make of Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister? On the one hand, yon have the most successful businessman Italy has produced since the war. A man worth around £8 billion and the ninth-richest person in Europe; a leader who remains an intensely charismatic and glamorous figure for many inhabitants of a country where bella figura counts for everything. On die other hand, however, we have burlesquoni, the clown with the facelift and the bandana; the joker who caused a major diplomatic incident when he recommended that Martin Schulz, the vice-president of the German social democrats in the European parliament, should take a film role as a concentration camp guard; the apologist for Mussolini who claimed the fascist dictator 'never murdered anyone'; and the attacker of the Italian magi-stratun ('To do that job, you need to he mentally disturbed, you need psychic disturbances').
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