Crikey

“There are a lot of pretty girls about. I am no saint but you know that.”

What a study in comparative political cultures this is!

A recording details a late night assignation with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

“I’m going to have a shower too … So wait for me in the big bed if you finish first.”

A woman’s voice, callgirl Patrizia D’Addario, replies:

“Which big bed … Putin’s?” (Yes, Vladimir Putin.)

“Putin’s,” the male voice says, to which the woman replies:

“Oh, how sweet … the one with the curtains.”

All of which must leave the Italian voting public nothing if not slightly wearied by a startling string of events that at various times has juxtaposed their priapic septuagenarian Prime Minister with prostitutes, divorce, images of his own naked and ah, alert, form, more prostitutes, showgirls, prostitutes, young showgirls and now Putins’s four poster. Another world.

And the best we can come up with is Wilson “Iron bar” Tuckey.