I don’t know how Silvio Berlusconi finds the time.
I don’t know how Silvio Berlusconi finds the time. Me, I’m ragged. Get up, write a bit, wash, eat, feed the child, stagger to nursery, stumble to work, stay there, go home, eat again, fall asleep on sofa watching The Killing; that’s pretty much my lot.
But him? If it’s all to be believed? Wake, kick voluptuous Tunisian out of bed, dye hair, eat enough to stay fat, meet dental hygienist, make her a weather girl, meet weather girl, make her equalities minister, run Italy, bribe someone, get bribed by someone, Skype Colonel Gaddafi and say one thing, Skype Nicolas Sarkozy and say the other, head home, via a quite random 18th birthday party in Naples, Skype Angela Merkel in the car, affectionately call her a Nazi, Skype Barack Obama in the car, affectionately call him dusky, get home, change into dressing gown, and still his work isn’t done. Because then, he’s got to get through the bunga-bunga. And he’s 74. It’s just not normal.
What is bunga-bunga, anyway? We’ve been talking about it for months, and still, nobody quite seems to know. With a guy Silvio’s age, the initial suspicion is that somebody just heard it wrong, and he was actually talking about bingo-bingo. But no. It’s definitely something sexual. Although what? It reminds me of the Spice Girls song, where they really, really, really wanted to zig-ah-zig-ah. Nobody knew what that was, either. You think it’s got to be something truly depraved but, really, even for the wildly athletic, how many options are there?
Firsthand reports, even if they are to be believed, vary from your vanilla, common or garden drug-fuelled orgy (not my garden; maybe Caligula’s garden) to entirely weird stories about sex acts performed on fertility statues. Either way, it sounds like a lot of work. And not just in the performance, but also in the admin. ‘If you want to go, fine,’ one teenager claims to have been told by a Berlusconi associate, ‘but you can forget about becoming Miss Italy or a TV weather girl.’ Isn’t the Italian weather-presenter market quite flooded by now? Sky News only has about three. There are more on the Beeb, sure, but still. It can’t work like that over here. Tomasz Schafernaker just doesn’t look the sort.
So many questions. One of them has to be, how come Italy has so many undeniably hot women floating around on the fringes of politics? Where are their British equivalents? Are they the ones who prey on footballers? So what’s wrong with Italian footballers? That’s a digression, though, because the big question is, how the hell does Silvio manage it? According to those WikiLeaks cables, US intelligence reckons that his ‘frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest’. But you wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you? He’s five years older than Sir Menzies Campbell. For God’s sake, he’s only ten years younger than Tony Benn. He’s more than twice my age, and a wild night for me is one where I stay up to watch Ten O’Clock Live. Cameron and Obama look knackered all the time, and they’ve just got young kids to deal with. Imagine the state they’d be in if they were up all night every night, watching dental hygienists fellate statues of Pan!
To be honest, I think I’ve turned the full circle with Silvio. Like everybody else, I started amused, then I was shocked. Then, for a while, I was disgusted. Now, though, I’m in awe. I’m not sure I’d want him in charge of my country, but if half the stuff they write about him is true, the guy is a superman. Credit where it’s due.
I’ve got a Kindle. Electronic reading device sort of thing. It’s bothering me. The wife bought it for me for my birthday, and I love it. Tube journeys, which I used to spend fiddling with my phone, or staring at people like a loony, now pass in a contented bubble of literary serenity. Books and the Tube, for me, never quite gelled. Not sure why. I’d forget them, or pick up the wrong one. With a Kindle, though, you keep it in your bag, turn it on, and see what’s there.
The trouble is, you can’t put it on your shelf. I mean, you can, but it doesn’t take up a lot of space. It has no decorative function. And, more importantly, no indicative one. When we were hunting for my first flat, in and around Camden, the wife and I had a contest in each one we visited, to see who would first spot a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. We’d snigger, sure, but we owned two. It told us that these were our sort of people, in our sort of place.
Thanks to iPods, my house has no CDs in it any more, save for in the attic. Thanks to cable, we barely bother with DVDs either. This I can deal with. But a future without books? It’s too much. I’ve been in houses with no books, and they freak me out. The walls close in on you. They’re like sarcophagi for people who aren’t dead yet, but might as well be. More importantly, what happens when people come round? What will distinguish me from the bookless? How will they know I’m clever? I’ll have to start wearing tweed.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
Comments