What Benito said to Clara on the hotline

I SEE that Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist dictator who liked to be seen as a man of steel now stands revealed as having spent a great deal of time on the phone in passionately erotic conversation with his young mistress Clara Petacci.

The writer Arrigo Petacco has discovered revealing transcripts of Il Duce's telephone conversations while researching his forthcoming book, Mussolini's Secret Archive.

There is all kinds of thrilling phone chat about the depths of the soul and eternal loyalty and the perfume of Clara's kisses sending Benito into a daze. One conversation even took place at midnight on June 9th, 1940, hours before Italy entered the second World War. Clara asked Benito why he was so tense: "Perhaps you don't love me any more," she suggested.

There are many who will think it quite typical that a woman should ask a man why he is "tense" when she knows he is about to plunge his "country into war, but not me. I understand the business of a woman needing emotional reassurance even when international affairs are at a crucial juncture.

As it happens, Benito responded to Clara by hanging up - but he then rang back to apologise and the pair ended up in the usual soggy romantic welter of apology and counterapology, all my fault/no not my fault stuff. This shows that a man of steel need not be incompatible with a man of thoughtful consideration or downright simpering obsequiousness if it comes to that.

Still, my own archival researches have shown that the conversations were not entirely warm and loving, particularly after June 10th, 1940.

Why are you so tense, Benito? Can be you are jealous?

Of whom, cara mia? There is another man in your life? He will die. Slowly.

No. In yours, sweetheart. I speak of Adolf.

Adolf? Who is this Adolf? I will remove his filthy heart with my own hands. Adolf! Omosessuale bastardo! A horse's head he will find -

Benito, I am speaking of your German acquaintance. Are you so sure he is your friend? I mean like, certo?

Do not speak ill of my loyal friend Adolfo.

Loyal? Benito stupido, my sweet fool! I talk of a man who has made it clear you are only a junior partner in the Rome Berlin axis, who treats you with disdain, for whom your opinions have mere consultative has occupied consultative value, who Russia Romania and invaded without even a courtesy phone call to you!

Clara, innamorata mia, you are right. Mi dispiace. Forgive me. He is a megalomaniac with bad breath. ,What, must I do?

Have you thought of attacking Greece through Albania without a word to him?

In Greece meanwhile, another archive has placed the country's government in serious need of emotional reassurance.

This archive belongs to Mimi.

Dimitra Liani Papandreou, the former air hostess, then mistress, wife and now widow of the late Greek prime minister, is thought toe be the source of a recent magazine, document purporting to show that Greece bowed to US pressure last, year during a dispute with Turkey, over a barren Aegean island.

Dimitra, better known as Mimi, has long been a thorn in the Greek political establishment flesh and is not without political ambitions of her own. The archive from which the magazine's embarrassing story is thought to have come was bequeathed to her by her husband, and the government now fears that Mimi has more dirt ready to fling.

Far from being a closed book, Mimi's archive is ongoing, and I have had sole access to some details of the passionate conversations between Mimi and the current Prime Minister, Costas Simitis.

I hope you will be kind, Mimi.

Costas, how can you say this? You know how much I care.

Ne, Mimi, but what it is you care for, this is my concern.

Perhaps, Costas, you do not love me any more. Ne?

Mimi, parakalo. I will be honest and say I do not love you any less. There is as much love between us now as there always was.

Costas, efchareesto. I have never questioned your loyalty. Your talent, yes, your courage, your political skills, your intelligence, all these I have questioned many times: But never your loyalty. Only sometimes I wish to know to whom or to what you are loyal.

But the information leak, Mimi?

Perhaps if the plumber was better appreciated, Costas. Yassoo!