Oh deer, it's Silvio again

SEVERAL times, in recent weeks, I have found myself writing about Italy and Silvio Berlusconi. Better change the subject, I thought. And what better way to get away from Il Cavaliere than to retreat to the snow-blanketed north of Europe?

But no sooner had I arrived in Helsinki than I was confronted by Mr Berlusconi again. There he was, in a photomontage of “Don Silvio” as The Godfather. The picture was being held aloft by a group of protesters outside the Kamp hotel, venue of a summit of centre-right European leaders (see my earlier post).  “Mafioso! Mafioso! Mafioso!” they shouted. Some wore pig-face masks. Others held up a banner: “Keep Finland Clean. Leave”

The demonstrators were a few score Italians living in Finland who had organised on Facebook - one said he had come from 400km away - to denounce Mr Berlusconi’s attendance at the summit. They certainly outnumbered the Finnish nationalists denouncing the prospect of an impending round of European integration (and perhaps of another possible bail-out, this time for Portugal). The Italians were louder too, so much so that the Finns seemed to give up and joined in shouting anti-Berlusconi slogans.

Maurizio, a 24-year-old IT specialist, said: “We are sick and tired of being made fun of by this idiot. We have come here to work. We try to beat the stereotype about Italians. We are honest citizens. But the way Berlusconi is carrying on only strengthens the stereotype. Every day he does something that worsens Italy’s terrible image abroad.” The Italian diaspora had once been a source of electoral support for Mr Berlusconi. On the evidence from Helsinki, that constituency is evaporating.

Finns, too, have reason to dislike Mr Berlusconi. Their beef, or perhaps better said their "venison", is his insulting attitude about Finnish food. In 2001, during the campaign to stop the European Food Safety Authority from being established in Helsinki, he described Finns as ignorant about food. In 2005, when the agency was finally set up in the Italian city of Parma, he quipped that he had succeeded by using his "playboy" charms on the country's president, Tarja Halonen. He complained about having had to "endure" Finnish food.  “There is absolutely no comparison between culatello (a kind of ham) from Parma and smoked reindeer,” he quipped. In response to the outrage, a Finnish pizza chain invented a “Pizza Berlusconi” with smoked reindeer.

Over dinner at the summit, Mr Berlusconi was treated to a meal of venison. As he emerged from the summit, amid questions about the political upheavals at home and his impending trial on allegations of having sex with an underage prostitute, Mr Berlusconi was gracious: “The filet of venison was extraordinary,” he said, “I even asked for a second helping.”