Silvio Berlusconi: Bunga Bunga Presidente (part two)

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1:55dragged themselves away from their art collections. When we left off, he was the all-powerful Prime Minister of Italy and the country's richest man. And he's about to embark on his grubbier antics, we would say. I mean, it's been pretty grubby up to now, but it's been mainly mafia bribes, the odd hit, sort of clawing his way up the greasy pole. He waited until he was the most powerful man in the country to get sleazy. Now my greasy pole gets clawed. God. Sorry, my jokes have been even ranking. I love it when Teddy shakes his head. He's like, you know you said something good. Yeah. Teddy, our producer, the wince.

2:36It's like, God. Something about this episode, because it's Silvio, makes it feel like you've got carte blanche to be even ranking. Yeah, he'd definitely be okay with those kind of jokes. So his grubby parties, let's get into them. It's New Year's Eve 2007, and Silvio throws a big old bash at a villa in Sardinia. And the guest list, there are 50 young women who are invited to attend. Only two male guests and Silvio. So yeah, quite the ratio. Two ministers. Yes. The foreign secretary and the chancellor. One of the women, Sandra, later spills the beans on this party. She says she was contacted by an actress and offered£1 ,300 to attend.

3:21It's quite good money. And they're all staying in their own little villas on this property that are near Berlusconi's mansion. And she said she was resting on the bed in her villa when the man himself walked in. She said his face was coloured with something that looked like self-tanning lotion. It stained his hands too, making them seem greasy. His heels were high. he held a bag full of jewels he's like dressed like one of the wise men

3:53bag of myrrh I don't understand why he needs to have self taling lotion when he lives in Italy because he wants that I guess he's not that tanned maybe I mean that look yeah but that's fake tanned he's orange so I love that he's even got the streaks around the hands he hasn't worked out that you gotta wear gloves when you apply that tan. A teenage girl from Surrey. Really tan knees. Backcombed hair. The Bag of Jewels is great. It's like a cartoon character of a villain, right? Is that payment? Or is that just like, I'm rich? Yeah, no, it's payment. I think it's gifts, right? Yeah, it's gifts. Sex trafficking laws.

4:31No strings attached to this gift. Yeah, he gives each girl a silver ring with a large stone. So that's a ruby often, apparently. and two bracelets with tortoises on them. It's a bit weird, but I guess he's just got... Is that something to do with him? No, I reckon they've fallen off the back of a lorry. The tortoise head coming out of its shell. Is there some kind of euphemism there? Yeah. I reckon maybe he's got, like, he's probably been gifted like 2 ,000 of these by Mafia or something. You know what I mean? Falling off the back of a lorry. The Bag of Jewels thing is like a sort of Medici. How often does a sort of jewel-crossed tortoise fall off the back of a lorry?

5:06I don't know, but he's obviously got all the loads of them because there's 50 women to give them to. Yeah. Do you think that's going to take it forever? She's going around every little villa on his estate. on his golf buggy. Like, when does he get to the shaggy? It's just jewels for now. It's like, fucking hell, it's 6pm. I haven't even started. Crossing palms with silver. And then she said, he actually gives them a tour of the gardens on a golf buggy, which again, must take ages. It's a big property. She said, Berlusconi mostly told jokes and played with an obscene pencil sharpener the obscene pencil sharpener was a small rubber figure of a man with his trousers down which moaned when the host turned a pencil it made Berlusconi laugh like crazy I mean it is pretty funny like one of those pens that like naked lady pens tip and strip is that what it's called yeah flip and strip yeah I was trying to get something knocked up for for Upshot fans of JP but is that pencil sharpener So he's the man having the pencil put into his bum.

6:09I'm guessing. Yeah. Yeah. Reading between the lines. Yeah. I was just, I couldn't work it out exactly. I love he's laughing like crazy. He's literally like a 11 year old boy. Yeah. Bag of jewels. He happens to be the prime minister of the country. Richest man. So then they had a dinner where the guests were invited to perform for their host, which meant dancing, kissing him, undressing, and then throwing themselves into the pool naked. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds on brand. It all sounds quite good. It didn't come out at the time, but it obviously will do later when he's rocked by several scandals. But in the meantime, these parties continue and they're getting seedier.

6:49So the journalists around his villa outside Milan, they basically realise these parties are happening every single weekend. They're seeing all these buses arriving with all these female guests, a large amount of tortoises encrusted with jewels turning up. So one sec, there's 50 female guests, three male guests. Yes. And I mean, presumably there's sex going on. Yeah, yeah. So after they jump in the pool naked, they all shag them, which we will come on to the... Three people shagging 50 women. Yeah, I guess maybe you don't... Surely a lot of those women are just like getting glasses of water, talking amongst themselves.

7:25Playing with a pencil sharpener. They physically can't shag 50 women. I think we'll come on to the details of the party later, but I think it's a bit of a competition for who gets Silvio's attention. that's part of the game and his pies I choose you you, you and you probably it's more like Hugh Hefner yeah he used to do that yeah because presumably Hugh Hefner wasn't shagging I mean there must be well he wasn't shagging anyone by the end I don't think yeah I reckon there's a lot of Viagra swimming around at this party obviously but even then yeah well Hugh Hefner I mean I think he used to invite like eight people into his bedroom playmates and then if you were willing to shag you'd come in with like Donald Duck like without your pants Donald Duck doesn't wear pants and he wears a shirt oh right like Donald Duck like Donald Duck sorry and that was his like cue that you wanted to fuck oh you just wear a top why could you be a playmate and not Shaq yeah I think so I think so what do you do you just have to like giggle at his horrible jokes yeah subjects yourself to like mental abuse rather than physical but no Shaq yeah but were they all his like girlfriends I think he had a few like proper girlfriends that he would like do stuff with and then he would have like a harem of women who he would, you know, abuse.

8:36He was kind, maybe not on a Berlusconi trajectory, but he was kind of like, like a bit of a like beloved figure of fun, wasn't he? In sort of like 70s and 80s America. Yeah, 100%. And he was a sort of like avatar for, you know, debonair of a man. Yeah, and Playboy was a bit sort of like - Playboy had great journalism. Yeah. Brains of views. Yeah, it was like Hunter S. Thompson. That's why I read it. Yeah, exactly. It was like Hunter S. Thompson on the road and stuff, isn't it? I mean, like many of these men, when he died, a lot of shit came out. It's a bit like, you know, these days you see pictures of, a few years ago, you'd always see pictures of Dan Bilzerian surrounded by like 30 women in bikinis beside his like helicopter or something.

9:17Yeah. Basically the 70s equivalent of that. Do you know what I mean? He's not like a counterculture figure. I guess that's just the difference in the decade we're in. But Berlusconi was kind of, was he kind of operating in that space as well? Not counterculture, but like... Counterculture? The fucking Prime Minister? richest man in it. People are kind of sort of that subsection. It's like cool. It's quite edgy. Edgy norms. So now there's that sort of non-establishment. He controls the media. He controls the culture. He owns three newspapers. He is the culture. People are kind of admiring the womanizing side of him as well.

9:55I think so. People knew the shit that was going on. Maybe not the details. Yeah. We'll get into it in a second. All right. So this one weekend, this journalist near Milan has basically seen it happen every fucking weekend. And he's like, I'm going to break this story that people are doing this. So he hides in the bushes around the mansion for this party with a long lens camera. And this is 2009 when the Czech Republic have just been awarded the rotating presidency of the EU, which is relevant to the story. and the Prime Minister of Czech Republic Marek Topolonek he's now one of Europe's big swinging dicks because he's controlling this presidency and so he gets invited to Silvio's party Silvio's keen to carry favour with him and little does Marek know that this journalist is hiding in the bush and the journo starts snapping away his cameras and he's got all these pics of all these naked women like dancing around the swimming pool they're cavorting with male guests and then he zooms in he sees this one bloke wander out of like a pool house and he's standing next to this woman in the bikini and he starts snapping away and he gets this picture of this guy and he notices that the guy is completely naked and has an erection and that man is none other than Czech Prime Minister Marek Topolonek who is standing there waving his horrible boner around So was it big and swinging or was it like small and static?

11:27well so the pictures end up in the Spanish newspaper El Pais who they blur his dick and they blur his face like because of decency or because to protect him well I think they didn't want the legal he must have been happy that he had more than 45 degree angle then yeah he was like we can't print this yeah I think the dick for decency rules yeah and the face for they don't want to get any blowbacks it's probably an invention of privacy yeah do you think Marek what was it Marek Topolonek Marek when he got invited along to this party he's like so I never knew that this is what happens with you the EU presidents it's like he thought it was like a diplomatic summit this is what Ursula von der Leyen does on the weekend as well I thought there was smints in the bowl yeah I mean I think I don't know if he even needed the EU presidency to come or if it was his first time that Tony Blair used to hang out at Silvio's house a lot of course he did with Cherie a lot of the time is there any sort of like when he invites him is there any kind of a pretense of this is a diplomatic summit, like to the naked women who wear like beef fetus.

12:30Yeah. Like the British delegation in here. It's Keely Hazel. There are 50 women and three members on a diplomatic summit. It's me, you and Gaddafi. Anyway, so the Czech prime minister, he's obviously his face is blurred, so he should have got away with it. But eagle eyed Czechs identify him because he's got a white wristband on his wrist that was given to him by George W. Bush. It's this like, you know, this is Livestrong. Isn't it like the Livestrong rubber band? This is the Livestrong era. It's actually, it's one protesting for democracy in Cuba. It's like an anti-Castro Livestrong band. What a way to get caught.

13:10It's white, which he'd like been given by Bush and was wearing all the time. And so some Czech readers look at it and are like, our prime minister wears that. And I think maybe they were able to compare ones of his body because he was banged to rights. he ended up saying yes that is me in the picture but he says it's been digitally altered to make my dick smaller to make my dick hard to make my dick hard I was soft I swear it but I guess he's trying to imply he had speedos on or something yeah I mean I noticed he stays in power that's still bad that's still hard to explain exactly I was wearing speedos I promise yeah at this sex party I noticed he stayed in power for like a couple more years though it didn't yeah I think the story didn't actually come out until a bit later.

13:57I think it was in 2009 when everything really kicked off. No one cares. No one cares. Just no one cares about this correctly. I think they do. Do they? Yeah, well, they do, sure. I'm still being better scotting as Prime Minister for like 15 minutes. Yeah, but they don't know about the parties at this point. Yeah, at this point they don't. What, the Mafia, the Procon and the Dua. It's Italy. Well, that sounds fine, exactly. Reach the wheels. So amid all this, it does manage to stay under the radar, and Silvio's re-elected as Prime Minister in 2008, his third stint. And he faces an early challenge to his premiership in April 2009 when a major earthquake hits Italy.

14:34Hundreds of people are killed. And, you know, I wouldn't say Silvio handles it perfectly. So he suggests that people left homeless by the earthquake should view their experience as a camping weekend. Oh my God. But just for the rest of their lives. Yeah. My house has just been destroyed. That's what homeless people are thinking constantly. I love the great outdoors. So again, what do you think the motivation is for saying something like that? He just speaks before he thinks. Yeah. Lack of empathy. Yeah. Yeah. I think that is it, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, he's like, well, I mean, just go to your other villa in Sardinia.

15:11Yeah. But Silvio is about to face an earthquake of his own. Because later that month, his wife, the long-suffering Veronica Lario, this was his mistress at one point right yeah she's now long suffering yeah well yeah she's still around at this point yeah they've been they're married for 20 years right she must have an inkling I think yeah a bit of lipstick on the collar don't come to the villa on a Saturday ever yeah but it all sort of kicks off in 2009 when Veronica writes an open letter criticising Berlusconi's choice of young attractive female candidates some with little or no political experience to represent his party in the european parliament elections um so bernice goni actually always said that he's done more than anyone for italian women including appointing a former topless pirelli calendar model as his minister of equal opportunities oh my god to be to be fair to her she she was actually a legit politician and still is now uh although imagine of that happened in the UK.

16:17Yeah. Like, okay, here's the new transfer of this jacket, Lucy Pinder.

16:24Equality is a great touch as well. She is legit. She is legit. Yeah, although it didn't stop Berlusconi sleazing over her. You'll be surprised to hear. I mean, I think that was the point, right? Yeah. It's sort of why she got the job. Yeah, so after appointing her, he joked that his party operated a feudal law where the Lord is allowed to take the virginity of his female subjects. This is the Prime Minister talking about one of his ministers. Imagine Keir Starmer saying that about like Yvette Cooper.

17:00How young are these ministers that they're virgins? Sort of 40. 40? Is she a virgin? Is that a euphemism with the virginity? Well, yeah. I guess maybe there are some younger ones who he's talking about. He did have loads of candidates who were really good looking who like worked in his media empire. Yeah, we watched one of his campaign videos for I forget which election it was and it was basically, it was like Silvio walking through and it was just a procession of beautiful women just like singing his praises. Yeah, there's no other men in the campaign video apart from him and there's just like loads of really good looking women.

17:34Yeah, vote for me and this is what Italy will be like. This will be your life. Yeah. It won't. You'll be living in a tent. He's quite big on the like, you know he mentions the feudal law he's quite big on so he kind of wants to be like the doge of florence or something doesn't he yeah that like feudal medieval dream bag of jewels yeah uh he also said about that that minister if i was not already married i would have married her immediately and that prompted his wife to force him into a formal apology in a national newspaper which he owned yeah exactly it's like that's like apologised formally in the newspaper that you own yeah but did you say his wife wrote an open letter in another newspaper as well yeah so that was yeah she'd written this open letter criticising his choice of these so they're now just warring in the media yeah yeah yeah his own wife you can see why her patience is beginning to wear a little bit it is a reality show isn't it it's got that like Trump thing of just like flood the zone with news about you and there's much more news coming because a month later Berlusconi lies to his wife and sneaks off to the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia who's a lingerie model who calls him papi.

18:50So that's daddy. 18th birthday party. It's not his actual daughter. It's about to take a very dark turn. Why'd she call him papi? We'll come on to that. Godfather. So he turns up at this 18th birthday party for her gives her this expensive piece of jewellery and Veronica, his wife, understandably, kicks off at that. She rages that Berlusconi had not attended his own son's 80s birthday parties. Too many men. Ratios were bad. Fucking sausage fest, that.

19:29Yeah, and that is the final straw for her and she files for divorce. About time, I think. At last. She says, I cannot remain with a man who consorts with minors and is not well. She's like, it's not the Silvio I married. I was exactly the Silvio she married. Wasn't she a mistress? He was married when they met. Yeah, she's finally drawn the line though. It actually later comes out that Letizia, this lingerie model, had spent a week at Berlusconi's Sardinian villa when she was 17. Right. On work experience. yeah i think so um yeah clean uh and other escorts start coming forward at this point so one comes out and says that she'd been paid twice to spend the evening with balasconi so everything his sort of web of uh of deceit is beginning to crumble because people didn't know about his like sex parties until this point until this stuff starts coming up didn't you say that that last one who confirmed she'd been paid twice she was 42 yeah she was 42 so he doesn't discriminate yeah older for him but the you want to become the chancellor oldest person in his cabinet minister for the elderly I'm 42 the really damaging blow is about to land though because a 17 year old Moroccan belly dancer Karima El Marroug better known as Ruby the Heart Stealer she is about to go public with her experiences with Silvio Berlusconi.

21:06So she says that he gave her 10 grand in cash at his party. And she says these events were just straight up orgies where Berlusconi and 20 women performed a naked African ritual known as Bunga Bunga. So let me just talk about how it comes out with Ruby. A few months earlier, she'd been arrested for shoplifting in Milan. And this is a bit of a serious problem for silvio because she's she's been attending his parties and so he personally phoned up the head of the milan police department and got them to release her and the way he did that was by telling them that she was the daughter of the president of egypt hosni and that there would be a diplomatic crisis if she was done for shoplifting and he said he said to them on the phone you need to hand her over to the specific woman nicole minetti and give her custody of this girl so nicole minetti is a former dancer on berlusconi's tv channels who then became a dental hygienist we're looking at a picture of her she's a good looking woman and they her and sylvia had grown particularly close because in 2009 berlusconi was at a rally when this um crazed man attacked him by throwing a statuette of milan cathedral into his face and Berlusconi had broken his nose and two teeth.

22:27And as she was a dental hygienist, Nicole had arranged for him to get his teeth fixed with a dentist. And they got really close after that. In response to that, he made her a regional deputy of Lombardy's government. Obviously. She's a busy fucking woman. Yeah, exactly. Wears many hats. Anyway, so she's basically a sort of close fixer and confidant of Sylvia Berlusconi. so when Ruby the heart stealer is done for shoplifting and he gets her released he's like I need someone to just like watch her and look after her and so he arranges for this Nicole Minetti woman to be given legal foster custody of Ruby the heart stealer so she's her mum now legally what's the difference in age?

23:13yeah probably not that big three years I think Nicole's in her sort of 30s 40s and a judge literally signs her over her real parents are like what yeah Hosni Mubarak what happened to Hosni Mubarak just had his daughter adopted um so Ruby's Ruby's been um Ruby's been shoplifting quite a lot of people are obviously aware that of this like night where she was handed over to Nicole Minetti too many people know about it and pretty soon the news leaks out and Ruby talks to the press She spilt the beans about these Bunga Bunga orgies. And after that, the floodgates open. Suddenly other women start coming forward and revealing all.

23:57All right. So we're finally going to get into the Bunga Bunga parties. So there are various different descriptions of what these parties were. Some say they were underwater orgies where nude young women encircled the nude host and his friends in a swimming pool. so according to the prosecutors Italian prosecutors who investigated them the parties started with a formal meal with food served in the colours of the Italian flag specific no expense spared and they then progressed onto a bunga bunga session in a disco like room so these parties have often been described as competitive striptease tournaments so So women dressed as often as nurses or as police, stripping and competing for one-on-one time with Silvio, basically to shag it.

24:49Is he the only subject of it? I guess it depends. The one part we talked about before, there were two other male guests. So I guess they were partaking as well. Is it like Save the Last Dance? But they strip at the end. Step up. Do you get your own ring of escorts around you? Or are you all in one ring? sort of three of you with your backs to each other. I don't know if there's a sort of competitive element to it. I imagine Silvio's like, Silvio dishes out the gold medal and then the other two are sort of silver. Yeah, he goes first. Silver and bronze. I bet those nurse and police. The Minister for Agriculture is a bronze medal.

25:24No, she's in the rick. Encircling him. I bet those nurse and police outfits are like Smithies, Amazon, synthetic. Well, actually, some of the costumes got even more creative because one of the women who attended these parties testified that their costumes included being dressed up as Barack Obama, Ronaldinho and Ilda Boccasina, who you might not have heard of, but she was the prosecutor investigating Berlusconi for corruption at the time. How do you dress up like her? Yeah, mask. Good question, mask, I think. When you say dressed as Barack Obama, are we talking full suit? I think suit and mask.

26:04And blackface, probably. Right, yeah, definitely. Definitely. it's Berlusconi Ronaldinho are they in like big T yeah I guess at the time this is sort of 2009 so I guess Ronaldinho was Milan's biggest signing at the time god yeah must be quite weird when they find out like Obama and Ronaldinho yeah because at this time Berlusconi would be at like NATO summits with Obama to be fair I think he's nailed his colours to the mast at NATO summits calling Merkel what he called her yeah Yeah. So the women come forward with different accounts of what happened at these parties. One said that he'd make them call him Pappy and would make obscene jokes throughout the parties.

26:50Apparently he'd often reveal a statue of a man with a giant penis that they'd have to kiss. Possibly a pencil sharpener. Yeah, I was about to say. That's just a pencil sharpener again, isn't it? Look at this. He's had it for years. Still laughing every time he does. I like the idea of him at like UN summits as well and just like having that leaning over George Bush and just elbowing him and just holding it in his palm George Bush would probably love that yeah although George Bush he's not sort of a dirty dog no he's not a dirty dog at all but he's got a great sense of humor Blair would be like stop it stop it who do you think of your most on board with that Gaddafi I don't think Gaddafi is a NATO summoner No, I reckon subject of a NATO time.

27:39I reckon Putin would get a chuckle out of that. Yeah, well, him and Putin were good mates, weren't they? Yeah, yeah. Really good mates. Yeah. We're going to come on to that. We'll come on to that, actually, yeah. There was actually, at the time, there was a porn parody that was made of the Bunga Bunga party. It was called Bunga Bunga Presidente. And it showed a Baila Scully lookalike freeing his girlfriend from prison and then having an orgy with women dressed as nurses. The Bunga Bunga element was quite... What I'm taking away from this is that we still don't know what a Bunga Bunga Bunga is.

28:12Yeah, we'll conclude at the end of this section. The Bunga Bunga Presidente was actually available on DVD on Amazon. We should maybe try and get a hold of that. It's out of stock at the moment. That's one for the wall. Yeah. I read an interview with the guy who made it being like, any similarities to reality are completely incidental. 80-year-old porn star with a fake tan and slip my hair. Hunga-bunga president. In a thong. Complete coincidence. Anyway, police basically discovered about these parties and wanted to find out more. So they ended up wiretapping some of the women that attended. Mostly they just found them slagging Silvio off, saying he's old, fat and flabby, and that he should pay them more, otherwise they'd steal from his house.

28:58They didn't like him. No. and Italian papers obviously are scrambling around to try and find out the origin of the term Bunga Bunga and they report that he'd learned about these parties from his good friend Colonel Gaddafi here he is so Gaddafi had allegedly hosted Silvio at these parties where he'd have harems of young Western women who basically would have an orgy with them but then a German actress and a close friend of Silvio, a woman called Sabina Began, gave another explanation. So she claimed that Bunga Bunga was actually Silvio's nickname for her. And she also makes a pretty explosive claim.

29:46She says that she was the one who organized these parties and that Berlusconi paid two and a half million in cash to dozens of women to attend. So this is quite a bombshell. Why have you admitted that? It turns out, yeah. Not to be the wisest admission from Sabina. She ends up being banged up for 16 months for procuring procuring prostitutes. I mean, what did you expect? Sorry, I was doing it for clout. Yeah, she apparently came out and was, she said later, like she really defends Sylvia Encore and says that he's a great man and that she'd come out and basically was doing this to sort of take the bullet for him and thought that he'd be able, she'd sort of get him out of trouble by making these admissions.

30:30Yeah, she's claiming it's her name. I don't think that's what Bunga Bunga is. I think it's basically his word for an orgy that he's learned from Gaddafi, right? And his favoured way of doing that is the encircling in the swimming pool thing. That's his favourite Bunga Bunga, I think. I think that's my read on it. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Funny that we still don't know. Yeah, I guess not. I mean, yeah, there's very... It's like quite a long time. The only thing he did take to his grave. actually there's one interesting name that got thrown up in in sabina began's trial the one who organized these parties and that was hollywood heartthrob george clooney so it turns out that the clooney had once gone to silvio's mansion uh he was on a bit of a mission to to get italy's help offering aid to darfur yeah that's what he got roped in uh so he later told time magazine about his visit.