Stories and News No. 23: The idea of inviting to the G20 also an Italian clown to make everyone laugh was truly beautiful!

The Story:

Peter was nine years old.
Together with other students of his school he was chosen to participate in the G20, having the honour to attend the world leaders meeting.
When he returned from the visit, he received the task of writing a composition to tell to his school companions about his experience:

My day at the G20 was very beautiful.
There were many people, from all over the world, of every colour. Everybody was smiling and shaking hands, talking and giving packs on shoulders.
It’s nice to know that the world presidents get together to solve problems of all.
My mother has been fired, but my father still has a job and this makes us lucky.
This my dad told to my brother and me while we were at dinner, but I think he was talking to mom.
The most beautiful moment was when I met the leaders.
It was just before the group photo.
I had never seen the Queen so closely. She seems only an old woman. She is an elegant lady, but just an old woman.
Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was the only one with eyes socket. I think he was late the evening before.
Obama is tall. He has a beautiful smile too. It’s clear that he is happy to be a president.
The German president, Angela Merkel, is identical to my aunt Elisabeth, just a little fatter. I told her and she said thank you. If she could know that aunt Liz is in prison for theft...
My aunt is not a criminal. The fact is that today it’s difficult to be honest. This is what my mother, that’s her sister, tells me almost every day.
When I gave my hand to President Sarkozy I made a laugh and he asked me why, but I could not tell him the truth. The fact is that I have thought about what dad always says when he sees Carla Bruni and him on TV: How is it possible that a very beautiful girl is married to an ugly man like him?!
My mother once told him that Sarkozy is very rich and my father replied: did she need money?
What struck me most was the Russian President, Medvedev, because I did not know who he was.
I was convinced that Putin was the Russia president...
However, I must make my compliments to those who organized this meeting.
The idea of inviting to the G20 also an Italian clown to make everyone laugh was truly beautiful.
Even if I don’t understand what he says, that Berlusconi is very funny!
He should work on TV…


The News:

From the Telegraph (By Nick Squires), 04 Apr 2009: Silvio Berlusconi's top 10 gaffes and pranks.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, prides himself on his ability to connect with ordinary people. But he has developed a reputation after making a string of gaffes on the world stage. After his latest mis-step at the G20 conference in London, which earned him a rebuke from the Queen, we count down our favourite Berlusconi moments.
1. April 2009
Silvio Berlusconi missed a symbolic Nato photo and a ceremony for fallen soldiers because he was too busy talking on his mobile phone.
2 April 2009
Days earlier, he was accused of embarrassing his country by yelling a greeting at US President Barack Obama and earning a rebuke from the Queen during an official G20 photo shoot in London.
Footage of the Italian prime minister becomes a YouTube hit in Italy, with one clip posted on the website titled “Bothersome Berlusconi, reproached by the Queen.”
3 March 2009
The 72-year-old self-made billionaire said his response to the global economic crisis was different to that of President Obama because “I’m paler”.
“I’m paler because it’s been so long since I went sunbathing. He’s more handsome, younger and taller,” said the media mogul.
Also accused of being racist, or at least gauche, in November 2008 when he hailed then President-elect Obama as “handsome, young and also suntanned”.
Mr Berlusconi accused his critics of lacking a sense of humour, and a few days later repeated the observation about Mr Obama’s mixed-race skin tone.
4 January 2009
Mr Berlusconi caused outrage by saying that although he was considering deploying 30,000 troops to Italy’s cities, there would never be enough soldiers to protect Italy’s many “beautiful girls” from rape.
5 January 2007
Mr Berlusconi said to a former showgirl and men’s magazine model, Mara Carfagna: “I’d go anywhere with you, even to a desert island. If I weren’t already married, I would marry you straight away.”
His wife, Veronica Lario, reacted by writing a letter published on the front page of La Repubblica newspaper calling for a public apology. She duly received one. Mr Berlusconi later made Miss Carfagna his equal opportunities minister.
6 July 2003
Caused a political row at the start of Italy’s EU presidency by referring to a German MEP, Martin Schulz, who criticised him for his alleged links to the mafia, as a “concentration camp guard”.
He told the German: “I know that in Italy there is a man producing a film on Nazi concentration camps - I shall put you forward for the role of Kapo (a guard chosen from among the prisoners) - you would be perfect.”
He later claimed he had been joking and had been thinking of a character from the popular TV series Hogan’s Heroes, set in a Second World War POW camp.
7 2006
Offended China by declaring: “Read the black book of Communism and you will discover that in the China of Mao, they did not eat children, but had them boiled to fertilise the fields.”
Later conceded: “It was questionable irony ... because this joke is questionable.”
8 Boasted that he had had to “dust off my playboy charms” to convince Finland’s female prime minister to set up the EU Food Safety Authority in Parma, Italy, rather than in Finland. Added the observation that: “Parma is synonymous with good cuisine. The Finns don’t even know what prosciutto is.”
9 He advised investors in New York to relocate to Italy because the secretaries were better looking than their American counterparts.
“Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries... superb girls.”
He also told the New York stock exchange: “Italy is now a great country to invest in... today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one.”
10 During a group photo of EU leaders in 2002 he made the Italian horned “cuckold” gesture with his hand behind the head of the Spanish foreign minister, suggesting he was being cuckolded. Mr Berlusconi said he was “just joking” and was trying to amuse a group of boy scouts who were nearby, but the gesture was felt to be out of place at an international summit.