He won't put his hand between his shirt and his waistcoat yet. He won't stick his little finger in his ear. But Berlusconi never came this close to affirming whose reincarnation he is. "In history, only one statesman did more than I have done: Napoleon". This is what Berlusconi stated to a prominent TV journalist in one of his latest unrestricted apperarances before the election campaign officially kicked off on February 9th along with its time-checking rules for all politicians who wish to appear on television.
"And I am much taller than him" Berlusconi added, as if it were not enough. "Sorry, I won't be able to arrange a face to face interview between Napoleon and yourself" said journalist Enrico Mentana, who has been for a long time the director of Berlusconi's own Canale 5 newsreel.
During his two-hour interview, Berlusconi, who insisted once more on how Italy never had such a performing and proactive government, left little or no time to the questions of the two newspapers director that were supposed to lead the interview.
Berlusconi, who has totalled an unprecedentedly enormous amount of hours on Italian TV screens over the last few months, at some point half-ironically and half-seriously argued that he was looking forward to the beginning of the campaign, "the law of the gag" as he put it, "so I'll be less often on television and will get some rest". The fact that he's enjoying less freedom in the TV arena than he was used to is not stopping him anyway. Berlusconi few days ago he came up with a new astounding comparison: "in the last few years I have had to bear such incredible sufferings that only Jesus Christ, after his way of the cross, could understand what I have been through".