Silvo Berlusconi and bunga bunga dude, where's my orgy ...

Thanks to Silvio Berlusconi I've added some new words to my vocabulary.

Hey, the glass is always half full, and then it almost filled to overflowing when the term bunga -bunga floated in via the digital ether. Naturally the Urban Dictionary is most fully up to date, fully sick as it were, as you'll find by trooping off to Bunga-bunga.

And naturally the British rags are full of it, perhaps because there's a natural affinity between repressed British politicians and the decadence of Rome (oh John Profumo, we owe it all to you).

If you fancy a taster - a bit of a chaser to fix what ails you - why there's the Daily Mail offering up a huge header, in 14 Berlusconi 'bunga bunga' girls evicted from luxury 'Dolls' House' flats where he let them live rent-free.

Phew almost no need to read the story after that 'says it all' header.

And then you can head off to The Telegraph, wherein you'll find Telephone intercepts lift lid on Berlusconi's 'bunga bunga' parties. And if you want a snap of saucy Nicole Minetti, Berluscon's dental hygienst, why The Sun is standing by to oblige with Silvio's bunga bunga girls. Oh heck, no need to do the click, here she is:

Yep, type bunga-bunga and Berlusconi into Google, and last count you scored some 1.12 million results in a blinding .09 seconds. Hunga bunga! It's tabloid heaven ...

But I can't understand what all the fuss is about.

Silvio is just falling into line with the ways of a lot of the Roman emperors who've gone before him. I was once startled to read Suetonius evoking the behaviour of Tiberius - well if you come from the country you might hear about boys and sheep, but you certainly never heard of the cavortings of emperors:

On retiring to Capri he devised a pleasance for his secret orgies: teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse and dubbed analists, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. Its bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri's woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of venery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes: people openly called this "the old goat's garden," punning on the island's name.

And that's just the clean bit. If you want Tiberius training his little boy 'tiddlers' or abusing women and earning the stage joke 'the old goat licking the does', go here.

If you can't get enough and want even more - lusty stuff about Nero and mad stuff about Caligula - then you might rush off to Project Guternburg for the Lives of the Twelve Caesars, here, but in a rather prosaic, obscurantist and dull translation. Compare and contrast:

XLIII. In his retreat at Capri, he also contrived an apartment containing couches, and adapted to the secret practice of abominable lewdness, where he entertained companies of girls and catamites, and assembled from all quarters inventors of unnatural copulations, whom he called Spintriae, who defiled one another in his presence, to inflame by the exhibition the languid appetite. He had several chambers set round with pictures and statues in the most lascivious attitudes, and furnished with the books of Elephantis, that none might want a pattern for the execution of any lewd project that was prescribed him. He likewise contrived recesses in woods and groves for the gratification of lust, where young persons of both sexes prostituted themselves in caves and hollow rocks, in the disguise of little Pans and Nymphs. So that he was publicly and commonly called, by an abuse of the name of the island, Caprineus.

Catamites? Spintriae? Not quite the same, is it, as goats ? Better to fork out for the Penguin translation ...

Still, it's enough to remind us that Berlusconi is just doing what comes naturally to emperors, and it also reminds us that when it comes to nailing the big one, the current Pope is just as craven and political as the Pope who did the dance with Mussolini.

Although the pontiff did not mention the scandal or Mr Berlusconi by name, he said public officials should “rediscover their spiritual and moral roots”.

During an audience with Rome’s police chief and police officers, he said: “The singular vocation that the city of Rome requires today of you, who are public officials, is to offer a good example of the positive and useful interaction between a healthy lay status and the Christian faith.”

On Thursday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican number two, said the Holy See was concerned by the recent developments and that there had to be a “more robust morality” (Pope issues thinly-veiled attack on Silvio Berlusconi).

But all Berlusconi's doing - to use a hearty Australianism - is confirming his spiritual and moral roots by allegedly rooting away like a mad man ...

What's all this mamby pamby talk of a 'singular vocation' in a 'thinly-veiled' attack, and 'good example', and 'positive and useful interactions' and a 'more robust morality'.

In my day the nuns would give you a whack across the chops for the most minor infraction and think nothing of it (or perhaps take an indecent pleasure in it).

Where's the naming and the shaming? Where's the attack on Silvio that's up there with the repeated attacks on homosexuals and casual fornicators? Put him on Jerry Springer ...

Naturally others have made the connection to the original emperors. Cue The Telegraph, and The Caligulan court of Silvio Berlusconi laid bare, but this is really a tad unfair to Berlusconi. Here's Suetonius on Caligula's sex life:

He had not the slightest regard for chastity, either his own or others', and was accused of homosexual relations, both active and passive, with Marcus Lepidus, also Mnester the comedian, and various foreign hostages; moreover, a young man of a consular family, Valerius Catullus, revealed publicly that he had buggered the Emperor, and quite worn himself out in the process. Besides incest with his sisters, and a notorious passion for the prostitute Pyrallis, he made advances to almost every woman of rank in Rome; after inviting a selection of them to dinner with their husbands he would slowly and carefully examine each in turn while they passed his couch, as a purchaser might assess the value of a slave, and even stretch out his hand and lift up the chin of any woman who kept her eyes modestly cast down. Then, whenever he felt so inclined, he would send for whoever pleased him best and leave the banquet in her company. A little later he would return, showing obvious signs of what he had been about, and openly discuss his bed-fellow in detail, dwelling on her good and bad physical points and commenting on her sexual performance. To some of these unfortunates he issued, and publicly registered, divorces in the names of their absent husbands.

Talk about an inspiration, and an aspiration.

Well who's going to be first off the block with an epic movie?

Back in the good old days, Gore Vidal flung together a script derived from a Franco Rossellini treatment which attracted the attention of Bob Guccione, who hired Tinto Brass to direct, and then when not satisfied with the results, did some extra shooting himself with thirteen Penthouse pets, and so was born Caligula, one of the worst films ever to grace the screen.

So how long before we get Berlusconi the Bunga Bunga movie?

And who will they get to play the pious, mealy mouthed pope, muttering and wittering asides under his breath? Since Jon Voight's already done Pope John Paul II, perhaps he could slim down ...

Of course the sexual life of politicians should be a private matter, at least if there's no conflict and they're doing a good job, but Italy is a mess, and no thanks in big part to the doings of Berlusconi, whether it's appointing his female friends to high office on a whim, or simply being incapable of organising a decent garbage run ...

That's the problem when you get an unholy concentration of media power in the hands of one individual (sssh, not a word about Rupert Murdoch).

Not to worry. We look forward to outraged commentariat commentators shouting from their pulpits all next week at the shocking behaviour of Berlusconi and his right wing government, and demanding his immediate resignation.

But don't hold your breath too long, after all when in Rome ...

(Below: Moroccan Ruby, age 17).