THE GLOBAL recession has claimed another victim. Namely, the release of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s latest CD of love songs.
Called True Love, the album contains 11 love songs, written by Mr Berlusconi but performed by Neapolitan singer Mariano Apicella, someone who has collaborated "artistically" with Mr Berlusconi since 2003 when the media tycoon first heard him perform in a restaurant in Naples.
For over a year now, there has been speculation about the likely release date of the prime minister’s latest lyrical opus.
A date in September and then another in October were pencilled in for the release of his collection of songs but, according to sources in the Italian music industry, Mr Berlusconi has concluded that, with Italy in the eye of the global economic storm, this is not the moment. Mr Berlusconi is no stranger to musical happenings. A key chapter in the Berlusconi legend recounts how the young, would-be entrepreneur paid his way through college by working as a crooner on Mediterranean cruise ships.
Not many of us can claim to have heard him in his ocean-going liner days but, more recently, he has put his after-dinner talents to good use, reportedly giving private performances, along with Apicella, for important house guests such Tony and Cherie Blair, Vladimir Putin and George W Bush.
It would seem that as a composer, the prime minister likes to strike a heavily sentimental tone, as some of the lyrics from Musicamake clear: "Hear these songs, they are for you, listen to them when you are thirsty for a caress, sing them when you are hungry for some tenderness, take these notes, steal them from our love, hold them close to your heart, take them away with you, undress yourself, there's the sea, so take a deep breath."
It all sounds harmless and innocent.
Except when one reflects that various women guests have reported that the prime minister and Apicella have sometimes performed at his infamous “Bunga, Bunga” house parties.
Those same events have earned the prime minister an unwelcome mention in the 2011 edition of the US state department’s “Trafficking In Persons Report”, which points out that Mr Berlusconi is under investigation “for the alleged commercial exploitation of a Moroccan child (Karima ‘Ruby’ El Mahroug)”.