A quick round-up of all the fantastic Silvio stories from the last few days:
1) Not content with complimenting Obama on his “tan”, Silvio reminds Italians that he himself is “paler”.
2) After the G20 photo has to be re-staged because of a wayward Canadian PM, Silvio wanders off and prevents a successful retake. His presence was more than evident during the first try, though, where he made headlines for irritating the Queen.
3) At the official arrival ceremonies at the Strasbourg NATO summit, marked by a symbolic crossing of the Pont de l’Europe over the Rhine, Silvio keeps a bemused Angela Merkel waiting while he chats on his phone. Perhaps more importantly, he then went on to miss the “class photo”, the walk across the bridge and the minute’s silence in honour of fallen NATO troops. My favourite detail:
At one moment, after the others had entered a marquee, Miss [sic] Merkel even peeked out to see if the Italian leader was coming in to join the photo before shrugging her shoulders.
He was not.
His phone call continued.
When a German military brass band struck up, Mr Berlusconi put his finger in his ear and walked further down the river bank to drown out noise.
4) An oldie, but a goodie – here’s Silvio “playing hide and seek” with Merkel at an EU summit last November.
He’s only being true to form:
The billionaire media mogul then sparked a minor diplomatic incident in 2005 by suggesting he had used “playboy tactics” to woo Finnish President Tarja Halonen in order to ensure her backing for Italy to host the European Food Safety Authority.
It’s anyone’s guess as to just why the seventy-three year old is has having his third go as leader of the world’s seventh largest economy. But never fear, there may well be even more power coming his way, and he won’t be leaving the world stage anytime soon – Italy will be hosting the G8 summit in Sardinia in July. Feel free to add your own favourite Silvio stories in the comments…
April 6th, 2009 at 00:00
properly embarrassing. Did you see, he virtually shoed Merkel away when he got out his car! She’s obviously more polite than he is in standing there waiting for him regardless…