Rome – It was domestic drama at its best, the kind Italians love: a scorned wife airing her dirty laundry for the world to see.
Veronica Lario, the usually private wife of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, made her anger over his flirtations public in a letter in a daily newspaper.
By day’s end, the 70-year-old billionaire, Italy’s richest man, was figuratively on his knees.
“Dear Veronica, here’s my apology,” Berlusconi said in his letter, made public by the conservative leader’s Forza Italia party. “Forgive me, I beg you. And take this public show of my private pride giving in to your fury as an act of love. One of many.”
Lario, 50, had voiced her complaints Wednesday in La Repubblica, saying her dignity had been offended by her husband’s behavior. She was reacting to comments that Berlusconi reportedly made last week during a party after a TV awards show.
“If I weren’t married, I would marry you immediately,” the 70-year-old Berlusconi reportedly told one woman.
“With you, I’d go anywhere,” he reportedly told another.
“I see these statements as damaging my dignity,” Lario wrote. “I therefore demand a public apology since I haven’t received any privately.”
Berlusconi is not new to making remarks that some women find inappropriate.
In 2005, when he was premier, he joked that he had to use “all my playboy skills” to convince Finnish President Tarja Halonen, a woman, that the European Union food agency should be assigned to Italy, not Finland.
