Silvio Berlusconi: the seediest man in football (part one)

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1:09Good energy in. Good energy out.

1:17Storm. Zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine and immunity support. Storm, energy for life. Milan, 1986. Italian billionaire Silvio Berlusconi lands on the San Siro pitch in a helicopter blasting Ride of the Valkyries. He'll go on to lead AC Milan to two decades of glory. But behind the suntan and scudettos lurks an empire of sleaze. Silvio scrapped with Liverpool fans, lured the EU president to a sex party and branded the German Chancellor an unfuckable lardass. And he was still elected Prime Minister three times. From Mafia henchmen to bunga bunga sex parties, welcome to the seedy world of Silvio Berlusconi.

2:06And welcome back to The Upshot. My name is Jack. Hello, Zach. Hi, Jack. and we are rejoined by quite popular demand I should say by Mickey Down welcome back Mickey welcome back old friend of the pod good to be back guys really good to be back I was saying to Zach I haven't been here since you both got proper haircuts yeah proper calling it proper yeah exactly Jack's still working on it Mickey is you are of course the co-creator of HBO and BBC series industry yes which is fucking great thank you for giving a little plug there's a full series at some point There is, there is. But I said when we weren't recording this that I can't say when it is.

2:44So this is pointless. Hey, we're not saying when. No, it's early next year. Early next year. Yeah, I've got a line in it. So tune in just for that. I've got playing a speaking role. He's got a speaking role, playing some sort of cool product designer. Yeah, as himself. Yeah, I think I'm playing product designer one or maybe number two, actually. A couple of digs against podcasts in that scene. Yeah, there's literally, there's a line in the scene where someone says, there should be a fucking tax on podcast equipment, which is like the comment we get the most on Instagram. I would say people always say there should be tariffs on podcast equipment.

3:16I will say that Jack did have to audition for the role and he sent me the audition topless. So I want to Berlusconi's TV show. His nipples out and wet hair. You were like, just do it now. And I just got out of the shower. Yeah. The erection was unnecessary. Why were you sending me the bottom half? When it comes out. that's being held in escrow. We need to see something. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, you're playing a part. I thought that's how Hollywood and shit works, isn't it? It is, it is. I love that on the screen it says Mickey's CD specialist. Yeah, well, the previous episodes we've done together...

3:53Does that mean just someone doesn't know about sport? Okay, you can choose to read it that way. Someone who knows about certain other matters. Just to like, summarise how ridiculous a character he is. So, at the height of his power, Silvio Berlusconi was Prime Minister of Italy, richest person in Italy, president of AC Milan who were the biggest club in Italy owned three of the main TV channels in Italy he owned the biggest publishing company and several newspapers as the Guardian said Berlusconi gathered himself more power than was ever wielded by one individual in a western democracy and he was a dirty old dog so the Wikipedia page on his legal cases against him is 18 ,000 words and he's also as Zach was saying He's one of the strangest looking men you can imagine Looking at a picture of him now I know but do you think I mean how old is he in that photo that we're looking at now?

4:4470s This is quite late I think He's got his political party in the background So I would say 70s there It's noughties He looks like a Madame Tissot's waxwork I think Like sort of Thunderbirds Or he looks like you know when you go to museums And they have these weird like animated models of You know like Yeah they've got one in the Cavemen in Amsterdam they've got that in the sex museum. They've got that thing that like opens its Mac and has like a big hairy cock underneath it. And it's like, that's what he really is. It's like, I can imagine him opening that double breasted suit and seeing a big hairy cock.

5:19Slightly whiter teeth. He's actually got very white teeth and like that fake tan. Yeah. That is fake tan. He's Italian. No, but he's, he's absolutely, he's embalmed there. But like, what I don't understand is that is one of the most untrustworthy looks you can have. He's even got that like Wall Street trader collar, right? The white collar with the blue shirt. The most untrustworthy look. It goes to show how much charisma can take you. Because, I mean, yeah, as you said, he was elected three times to be Prime Minister of Italy. Yeah. After like several political and financial scandals. Yeah, yeah.

5:51He just kept coming back. Yeah, I mean, when you look that artificial, then it's no surprise that you're hard to take down. Should we get into it? Because it's a wild saga. and it is the word CD is going to come up a lot. Yeah, it certainly is. So we go all the way back to the start. So Silvio Ballasconi was born in 1936 in Milan. He's the oldest of three kids. He's actually from a relatively humble background. It's a pretty normal, low middle class family. His dad worked at a bank. The bank supposedly had some mafia links to it. I think they stored their money there. The family actually have to flee Milan in 1943.

6:30so it's second world war and the allies bombed milan so silvio and the family have evacuated to a village in the countryside where his grandparents live uh and he's he recalls milking the neighbor's cows and picking potatoes from the fields to to get money to feed the family um and all the all the time he's out in the fields and he can see this glow from milan burning from from the bombing. After the war, they moved back to the city, though, and Silvio is sent to this very strict disciplinarian Christian school, although he doesn't quite stick to the teachings of the Bible because he's expelled age 10 when he stabs another student with a knife during a fight.

7:15Ten? Ten, yeah. So he's a psychopath. He's a psychopath. Was he sort of like chopping up frogs and torturing cats to death before that, before he moved on to a human. It starts with burning wasps. Yeah, exactly. It just keeps going up. Like catching flies with set of tape and putting their wings on. And then you're just stabbing someone in the leg. How bad's the stabbing? He stabbed him in the hand, apparently. So I think they got into a bit of a scrap. Apparently, I was reading a biography of him and saying that apparently the priests or whatever, the teachers at this Christian school were pretty tough on Silvio in particular.

7:53so I'm impressed you read a biography for this we do that now I do I sat down and said who are we doing today don't really prep for this you don't need to prep but we read I read a couple actually Skim read a couple one of them was very much the party line it was just this like grand narrative of like Silvio Berluskin he came from nothing everyone who worked with him when he was a businessman just said what a strong and powerful leader straight shooter such great moral compass the other one was a bit more yeah he stabbed a bit more truthful in the hand something about stabbing in the hand is also quite like he's maybe seen a mafia guy do it's quite cold blooded isn't it it was a screwdriver yeah exactly it feels like something he might have witnessed not necessarily at home but at the bank yeah I don't know if he would have witnessed it at home actually because it was a very religious family eight of his his family members were nuns apparently and they always used to joke that he'd make a great Pope.

8:56I'm not sure if that was before or after the stabbing. Went in a different direction. Yeah, it did. You like kids then? Yeah.

9:06It's actually quite musical. I didn't know that. He played double bass and sang in a band when he was a teenager. And they'd perform around different dance halls and nightclubs in Milan. And then she later performed as a crooner on cruise ships. Oh, we're looking at that. he's pretty good looking isn't he he is quite a looker you can tell he's good looking in his youth can you well you don't behave like that in your old age if you weren't good looking when you were young but looking at his face you can't even tell he had a youth exactly it was the 40s yeah but he's good looking he is good looking so is that him on a cruise ship that's him on a cruise ship he is he's got a bit of a Sinatra thing yeah he sang a lot of Sinatra actually in Broadway musical songs apparently his albums sold very well in Italy.

9:53I think like in the 90s still a lot of Italians will listen to them today. Do we have a clip? No, we actually, we went online and listened. Don't afford it. For rights reasons. No, we went online and listened and it was, yeah. It's all Italian crew and stuff. Yeah. It's all in Italian. You need a gramophone. Yeah, it wasn't worth listening. Yeah, actually he does a stint in Paris as well doing Cabaret. Oh yeah. His dad shows up at one of his shows one time and he's up on stage crooning out My Way by Frank Sinatra and spots his dad scowling from the back of the auditorium. And after the show, his dad pulls him aside.

10:28He's like, Silvio, you're coming back to Milan. You're finishing your law degree. That's a high school musical for him. Yeah, why is it that his dad doesn't approve of the sort of burlesque women around him? Or just the general? Yeah, I think just in general, just like, this isn't a proper career. I guess cabaret is a bit seedy, isn't it? Yeah. I'd rather you become the Pope. Or a lawyer. Something that's less seedy. um but yeah anyways dad dad drags him drags him back to milan finishes his law degree uh he does actually hang on to his musical side a bit though there are some videos we saw online of him uh singing later and he ends up writing ac milan's anthem alongside this music producer at gunpoint i'm gonna write it sing the theme to you and now own the club anyway as for his business career That kicks off in the early 60s.

11:16So he's in his 30s at this point, sort of late 20s, early 30s. And he starts off building houses in Milan. It is all a little bit dodgy. You'll be shocked to hear. So, for example, his very first successful business deal, he bought all this land that was next to Milan Airport right under where the planes took off. So you couldn't build on it because the planes were so low over it. But he bought that and then very quickly got them to move the flight path using his connections and just built a huge development there, sold it for millions. And he's off on his way. He's a rich man after that point.

11:50It's quite like oligarch stuff, sort of using political pressure to get your millions. And very quickly, he is filthy rich and splashes out in 1973 on an 18th century palace just outside Milan, which really becomes his lair for the next 50 years, really. It's massive. It's got tennis courts, horse runs, stables, two swimming pools, hundreds of acres. It's filled, at the time, at the peak of his political power, it's described as filled with paintings by Italian masters. Although when he died, there was a bit more detail on this. So he had a collection of 25 ,000 paintings, but members, people who are acquainted with the collection said actually most of them were pornographic and quote, bought from late night television shopping channels.

12:40Pornographic? is that sort of like pre-Raphaelite nudes or is that like when you go to a garage and you see like nuts taped to the wall it's like it's not pre-Raphaelite nudes it's like more at the porn end so one of them was a version of the Mona Lisa where she's topless oh okay okay so like custom yeah custom stuff I mean you bought it on a late night shopping calendar they said it was more Pirelli calendar than art collection oh really it's like a garage yeah more like a sort of yeah a sort of the brasses that you'd see postcards from prostitutes yeah you'd see in a phone box I think with maybe like faintly dressed as like old masters and stuff like that yeah apparently his relatives are considering burning the collection oh really they've inherited them no value in them well that's 25 ,000 as well can you imagine you inherit Silvio Berlusconi's painting collection you're going like amazing oh there's going to be some like Caravaggio's in there and then you go up to the attic and you're just going through it was like oh it's the Mona Lisa it's the Mona Lisa Venus de Milo with a coconut imagine exactly a lost master don't remember this one actually

13:55anyway so shortly after moving into this palace he hires a fella called Vittorio Mangano as his stable keeper so you know stable keeper job sort of mucking out the stables keeping the horses in order, walking around the run every day. But it turns out that Vittorio ain't no horse whisperer. He is, in fact, a feared member of the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia. Did he know that when he hired him? I think he probably did. He probably had the lawyers wanted that one. So basically there's a big case later where a couple of guys from the Cosa Nostra flip and they turn on all their other members and denounce them in court.

14:35And they reveal that Cosa Nostra bosses used to come and visit Berlusconi at this villa in this era and have meetings with him. So Mangano's the fixer for that, basically. He's the point man. So yeah, I think he knew very well. And Mangano's a seriously bad dude. He's not a lower ranking member. He was accused of, among other crimes, arranging the kidnap of Prince Luigi D 'Angero, who went round for dinner with Berlusconi at the mansion and on his way home was nabbed by the mafia in his car and taken it to their car. They actually botched it because while they were driving off, they crashed and he managed to escape.

15:13I was really about that. And apparently he was, they like, they stopped his car, kidnapped him, got him into the back of this Alfa Romeo. And apparently they were just driving it like absolutely nutters. And he's on the back seat. Just like, guys, please, can we just like slow down? Please, like, could I have a crash? And they just crashed it. And he got away. But I have to say, that story sounds a little bit like Silvio was implicated. Why was he having dinner with him? Yeah. But anyway, who knows? Mangano is actually eventually jailed for a couple of murders. And the prosecutor who first named him as a kingpin died in a car bomb.

15:47So yeah, he's in the Sicily. Can I have the dots? Yeah. By the 70s, though, Silvio Berlusconi is moving from construction into media. So he starts out buying this local TV station in Milan. And up to this point, Italian TV is pretty dull. It's a bit like British TV in the sort of 50s, 60s. Quite dry, educational broadcast. I can see what this is going to do. I think tits are going to be as old. It's not going to be the weakest link, is it? It's a theme, isn't it, of this podcast? Women. Yeah, that kind of stuff. This particular podcast. I said it was seedy. Yeah, this episode. Yeah, this is particularly seedy.

16:31Unspiracy, that kind of stuff isn't really Silvio's bag. And he quickly revolutionizes Italian TV. So he introduces some of it as quite, you know, fairly normal entertainment shows, quizzes, cartoons, just, you know, light entertainment. But then there's also quite a lot of sort of burlesque style shows, scantily clad women, topless women dancing. There's one account of it said, the women rarely spoke beyond introducing commercial breaks or replying that they didn't know the answer to a question. So he's replacing the news at 10 with like Euro trash. Yes. The whole TV landscape is Euro trash. It's basically, I think it's basically like Rupert Murdoch with the newspapers, isn't it?

17:14Because even the thing of like, didn't know the answer to the question, which is just needless misogyny. He didn't need to have that. That's quite like page three having their quote. Tell me about the Iraq war. There's a storm and it's like, I have no idea. Yeah, it's quite that vibe. Yeah. yeah funny thing I liked was years later the BBC sued Balaskani for broadcasting a pornographic version of Strictly Come Dancing how did you do that it was like Strictly Come Dancing hardcore porn like insertion they're basically on the dance floor just like apparently it was just like topless women dancing around like simulating sex supposedly dancing which it's hard to imagine Anne Whittaker doing that does the BBC have a a do they have a monopoly on that?

18:01No, but they claimed it was they own the Strictly brand. It was Strictly but with a C-U-M. Yeah. Yeah.

18:10They said it was too similar. And then I read because Berlusconi's executive goes stealing ideas isn't a crime. And they were like, yeah, but you're passing it off as their brand. He had to be like, I didn't say that. Stealing ideas also is a crime. Well, not ideas. Okay. Let's not get it. That's for property. Copyright law. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was only one specific dance where, like, you know, everyone has to do the cha-cha and just one of the dancers came out and just had no top on.

18:38We watched someone who had, like, a compilation of, like, this is what Berlusconi did to TV thing. It's just, like, quick cuts. And it is, like, strictly just scantily clad women. It's mental. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that is really his case, isn't it? These clips in Zanardo's film aren't from late night TV shows. Many were broadcast during the day or early evening. They show women who are not just sexualised, they're often humiliated. Alongside that, he also starts importing these American shows, Baywatch among them. Although Pamela Anderson in a red swimsuit isn't the only one that Silvio's ogling.

19:19because in 1980, he first sets eyes on the lovely Veronica Lario. So she's dancing topless in a show that he goes to see. Everyone's dancing topless. It's Italy, come on. Is that what it was like? It's Italy in the 70s. Is that what it was? It was the 80s. Anyway, Silvio begins an affair with Veronica that goes on for the next five years. So I should say he's been married since the mid-60s and has two kids, but he divorces. That's such a funny detail. forgot about that totally forgot about that he was married I think so did he he does divorce his first wife in 1985 and marries Veronica five years later back in the media world though Silvio is quickly picking up a collection of regional stations and he eventually forms this national broadcaster so at the time it was actually illegal to have private national channels in Italy but fortunately Silvio had befriended the Prime Minister and head of the Socialist Party, Bettino Craxi.

20:23And Craxi just issues a decree that makes Berlusconi's network legal, which was very nice of him, obviously. That's Channel 2 now. Yeah, exactly. It would emerge some years later that Berlusconi's media group had funneled close to$17 million into Craxi's secret offshore bank accounts. So that's a straight-out bribery job. Yeah. I do think you should be allowed to have a national broadcaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's the law. You should. The law needs to change. Yeah. Sometimes you've got to grease the wheels. A lot. Yeah, a lot of grease. You talk to a personal bank account. In Switzerland.

21:03But with this media empire and friends in high places, Silvio is quickly becoming very powerful and very influential. and in 1978 he's invited to join Propaganda Due which is this secret neo-fascist Masonic lodge. That's a lot of words. Secret neo-fascist Masonic. It's like, I wonder what they're up to. That sounds above board. Well, yeah, it's a secret group. It's also called Propaganda 2. but yeah there's some seriously influential people in there the heir to the Italian throne along with the heads of the secret service Italy is fucking mental isn't it? the masons thing is big in Italy isn't it?

21:50because Mussolini was really hard on them he clammed out this group was banned by Mussolini but they sort of came back slowly and adopted his ideology and over the following years after Silvio joins propaganda do it implicated in numerous high profile Italian crimes political corruption and contract killings of journalists as well no idea whether he was directly implicated in that but the group was they were actually shut down when police raid the villa of its leader in 1982 and find a written plan for a coup that's the obvious yeah sort of the obvious how to take over the government on the back of a napkin seize yeah seize control of the army step one yeah I mean you can kind of see why replace the army with naked women yeah starts with naked weakest link host a mass 25 ,000 pornographic painter yeah I guess his role in that is the media yeah exactly he's one of the most powerful media figures so getting him on their side part of the group is their way to control the media basically sort of the story of his rise from the beginning isn't it it's like he's just useful to organize crime like even from the very early deals like i think his housing projects they're funded by sort of like various banks it's all quite shady where the money comes from but i think he's just like a useful kind of front man straight man for them well i'm assuming they move the flight path yeah yeah well they they provided the bribes that moves the flight path whatever yeah truncheons to the head.

23:27Yeah, carrot and stick. Yeah, mostly stick. But with Propaganda Due shut down, this coup is off the cards and Silvio sticks to growing his media empire. So he gets control of several newspapers, founds this publishing company and through these different sources, he amasses a huge, huge fortune. And so he decides it's time to turn to Italy's other love. Cassio yeah so AC Milan in the mid 80s were in dire straits they'd they'd been sunk down to the second tier for a match fixing scandal six years earlier when Berlusconi turns up in 1986 and he basically rescues them from bankruptcy they couldn't be more down at heel in basically at the end of 1985 the the crowd at the San Siro had unfurled this huge banner saying Silvio Berlusconi please buy our club which again and sounds slightly orchestrated.

24:28I've got a feeling that didn't come as a total surprise to him. It's a massive banner. They want to be rescued. And so he's given this hero's welcome when he arrives at the stadium, landing on the pitch in a helicopter, playing Ride of the Valkyries. And I think he invites all the players as well. They land in a helicopter as well with him. It's like this ridiculous scene. But the fans couldn't be more delighted. Like one of the richest men in Italy has come to their rescue. And he later says the club was expensive, But the most beautiful women also cost a lot. A bit of a non-sequitur. Yeah. His mind is one track.

25:03Needlessly inject sex into every club. We didn't ask you about that. I asked you about the club's debt restructuring program. He's actually quite like a modernizing owner because Italian football at that point is like really old school. All the clubs are family owned. And they're the first to open like a merch shop, like a club magazine and all this stuff that's quite forward thinking at the time. And he hires this manager, Arrigo Saatchi, who will go on to become a legend. And they sign, again, some big-name players, Ruud Hullet, Marco van Basten, Carlo Ancelotti. And together, they win AC Milan's first Serie A title in nine years, in 1988.

25:41So it's redemption. And from there, they go on to become probably the most successful club in the world in the 90s, certainly in Europe. It's an era of unrivaled success. So back-to-back European Cups, three consecutive Serie A's. They go unbeaten for 58 matches. So they are dominant. They have Fabio Capello as manager for some of it. That's sort of how he made his name as a super coach. But yeah, things are going very well on the pitch and it's doing wonders for Berlusconi's reputation. But away from football, his power is becoming slightly precarious. It is because Italian politics in the 90s is thrown into disarray.

26:20There's this huge corruption scandal. All the major parties are implicated in it. and Berlusconi's media company as well is implicated. They've basically been funneling cash in and this is very bad news for Berlusconi. He's potentially facing jail time and so he decides that the best way to avoid that is to go into politics himself. So is that like if I'm in power, I can just cancel this? Yeah, these cases will go away. Act one, scrap the corruption. investigation and so he he found Forza Italia this right wing political party which Forza Italia is basically the come on England party it's come on Italy it's hard to argue with it's what you chant yeah Forza Italia it's what Italian fans chant the match yeah yeah it's a simple sentiment yeah it's quite good but yeah he admits that the whole thing is just a ruse to avoid jail really and to get himself even more power.

27:25Surely everyone's like, but that guy's implicating the corruption thing. Yeah, so he bases his whole campaign around the fact that he's an outsider. So obviously Italians are quite disillusioned. Despite being a member of propaganda duo. Owning three TV stations. It's a bit of the Trump thing, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, he obviously, he hadn't been in politics before. Italians are disillusioned with this corrupt political system and he positions himself as the outsider who's in there to clean up the murky swamp. I'm corrupt to the different sphere of influence. Which, yeah, it's ironic considering he's more mighty in it than anybody else.