So. Farewell then, Silvio Berlusconi. The tone of Private Eyes obituarist and poet in residence seems somehow appropriate for a man who never seemed to take either politics or himself entirely seriously. Abroad, this most colourful of post-war Italian politicians will be remembered less for his impact on Europe than for his Bunga Bunga parties and other playboy extravagances. He was a media magnate who never ceased to provide copy for the tabloids, whether incessant speculation about possible Mafia connections, thousands of courtroom appearances, or his constant, hitherto seemingly irresistible comebacks.

In the end, only the frailties of old age seem to have persuaded Berlusconi to bring down the curtain on his own political career. At 85, he still hoped to enjoy one final act, with a bid for the biggest job of all: head of state. He might even have got away with it, had not a lifetime of overindulgence finally caught up with him. A heart condition serious enough to require hospitalisation is the official reason, though doubtless not the only one, for the former crooner who liked to be known as il Cavaliere to take his last bow.

Yet Berlusconis career has changed the world more than most of his rivals on the world stage. Long before Donald Trump, he was the godfather of populism. Unlike Trump, who was just a media personality, Berlusconi actually owned the media. At the height of his power, he was estimated to enjoy, directly or indirectly, control over 90 per cent of the Italian press and broadcasting. Whereas Trump was just one of many New York real estate billionaires, Berlusconi was the richest man in Italy. And he used his wealth and control of the media ruthlessly to dominate politics for a generation. Berlusconi was the original, Trump merely the imitation.

Though he held office for less than a decade, that was enough to make him the longest serving Prime Minister in post-war Italy. Indeed, over the century and a half since the unification of the Risorgimento era, the only men to have led Italy for longer were the liberal Giovanni Giolitti and the fascist Benito Mussolini. Berlusconi was so often compared to the latter that he developed a soft spot for the Duce though he did not approve of the fascists anti-Semitic laws. In 2003, the then Prime Minister told the Spectators Nicholas Farrell and the magazines then editor that Mussolini was not a bad leader: he never had his opponents killed, but merely sent them on holiday.

That editor was a certain Boris Johnson. Was Berlusconi a role model for the man who became Britains Prime Minister 16 years later? To ask the question is to realise how absurd the comparison really is. Were Johnson to have been accused of any one of the myriad crimes and scandals in which Berlusconi has been embroiled, his career would never even have got off the ground. In spite of the overblown rhetoric of their accusers, Boris is no more a populist than Silvio is a fascist.

Just as Britain has genuine populists, such as Nigel Farage, so Italy has had genuine neo-fascists, such as the postwar Italian Social Movement (MSI) and its later offshoot, the National Alliance (AN) of Gianfranco Fini. Yet although Berlusconis own party, Forza Italia, has sometimes been in coalition with Fini, this was only after Fini had distanced himself from Mussolinis legacy.

What is undeniable, however, is that Berlusconi has contributed to the return of authoritarian politics in Italy. The fact that he has exercised a control over his national media of which even Rupert Murdoch could only dream has undoubtedly made it easier for far-Right parties, such as the Brothers of Italy, to gain a sizeable parliamentary foothold. That power has also enabled Berlusconi to keep the judges at bay whom he has accused of defying democracy in their pursuit of him.

The Spectator interview took place at Berlusconis villa in Sardinia, where the notorious Bunga Bunga parties took place that eventually contributed to his downfall. Over the past seven years he has been embroiled in a series of trials for bribing underage girls to keep quiet about what happened at these parties. Together with his conviction for tax fraud in 2013, Berlusconis legal travails had kept him out of public office for several years until just before the pandemic.

What, if anything, did Berlusconi achieve? The fact that he had never held public office until he burst onto the political scene in the mid-1990s was one of the main reasons for his popularity in a country where most voters assumed that all politicians were corrupt. Berlusconi was so rich and so powerful that he was presumed by many to be impossible to bribe, and consequently worthy of their trust. Unfortunately the experiment, repeated many times since, has never proved the correctness of this presumption. Tycoons, it seems, are no less dishonest than the rest, merely more munificent.

At the European level, Berlusconi was often treated as a buffoon, particularly by the more sober-sided northern leaders such as Angela Merkel. On one occasion, he was recorded telling a newspaper editor that the German Chancellor was an unfuckable lard-arse. It was left to Jeremy Paxman in 2014 to ask the now ex-Prime Minister whether he had used these words. The footage, which can be viewed here, is priceless. After a long silence, in which Berlusconi gesticulates to feign shock at such language, he replies that in 20 years in politics I have never insulted anyone.

Perhaps this exchange should be the Cavalieres epitaph. Having transformed Italian politics from a sinister harlequinade into an absurdist opera buffa, Berlusconi can claim at least to have modernised its style and idiom. His debauchery may have lowered the tone of public life in the Eternal City; unlike the Church, however, he never claimed to be holier than thou. In 2011 Pope Benedict XVI told the Prime Minister, then mired in scandal, to rediscover his spiritual and moral foundations. Berlusconi prefers Benedicts successor, Pope Francis, who is less intellectual and more worldly. He once remarked that Francis acts as Pope in exactly the way I would. Some have even joked that if the Quirinale, the Presidential palace in Rome, were to elude him, Berlusconi would set his sights on the Vatican.

Despite the ongoing court cases, at least he will avoid ending his days behind bars. At the climax of Puccinis opera Tosca, the eponymous heroine throws herself to her death from the parapet of the Castel Sant Angelo, the papal prison, to evade capture. Silvio Berlusconi has no need of such desperate measures. Convicted of tax evasion, he benefited from a law he had passed while in office: those over 70 cannot be sent to prison. Handed down a four year sentence, he spent just one of them doing community service in a care home. Silvio the silver fox has always had the last laugh.

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The godfather of populism: Silvio Berlusconi bows out of politics - TheArticle