Former Italian PM Humbled By Scorned Wife

It was domestic drama at its best — the kind Italians love — a scorned wife airing her dirty laundry for the world to see.

In this case it was Veronica Lario, the usually private wife of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who chose to make her anger over his flirtations public in an open letter in a daily newspaper.

By day's end, the 70-year-old billionaire — Italy's richest man — was figuratively on his knees.

"Dear Veronica, here's my apology," Berlusconi said in his letter, made public by the conservative leader's Forza Italia party. "Forgive me, I beg you. And take this public show of my private pride giving in to your fury as an act of love. One of many."

Lario, 50, had voiced her complaints Wednesday in La Repubblica, saying her dignity had been offended by her husband's behavior. Adding insult to injury, Lario chose a left-leaning newspaper that is a fierce Berlusconi critic.

She was reacting to comments that Berlusconi reportedly made last week during a VIP party after a TV awards show broadcast by one of the media baron's Mediaset channels.

"If I weren't married, I would marry you immediately," the 70-year-old Berlusconi told one woman, according to reports widely carried in the Italian press. "With you, I'd go anywhere," he reportedly told member of parliament Mara Carfagna, 31.

"I see these statements as damaging my dignity," Lario wrote. "To both my husband and the public man, I therefore demand a public apology since I haven't received any privately."

"I have faced the conflicts and painful moments of a long conjugal relationship with respect and discretion," she said. "Now I write to state my reaction," Lario said, calling her husband's comments "unacceptable" and saying they could not be written off as mere jokes.

Berlusconi is not new to making remarks that some women find inappropriate. In 2005, when he was premier, he joked that he had to use "all my playboy skills" to convince Finnish President Tarja Halonen, a woman, that the European Union food agency should be assigned to Italy, not Finland.

He likes to recall his success with women as a young man, and to show off what he says is his gallantry.

Citing the demands of his busy life combined with his "playful, self-ironic and sometimes irreverent personality," Berlusconi admitted in his letter that he had been "a bit irresponsible."

"My days are incredible, you know: work, politics, troubles, moving around, public exams that never end, a life under constant pressure," he wrote.

"But your dignity has nothing to do with it, I treasure it as a precious good in my heart, even when I make carefree jokes, a gallant remark," he wrote. "Believe me, I've never made marriage proposals to anybody."

Berlusconi and Lario, a former actress, were married in 1990, but already had been together for a decade. She is Berlusconi's second wife, and the couple have three children.

Berlusconi often has said it was love at first sight when he saw Lario, then a 24-year-old actress, performing at a Milan theater in 1980.

"When we met, she made me lose my mind," he told the women's magazine A, which released excerpts Wednesday. "She's a special woman," said Berlusconi. "She has been and is a wonderful mother. She has never embarrassed me, never."

When her husband was premier from 2001-2006, Lario largely shied away from her role as first lady, but occasionally broke her public silence with stances that suggested an independent-minded personality. In one case, she defended pacifists protesting the war in Iraq, which Berlusconi supported.

But even if the couple is rarely seen together, their marriage has come into the spotlight before.

In 2003, the flamboyant billionaire acknowledged rumors linking his wife to a left-leaning philosophy professor, Massimo Cacciari, during a news conference with the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

"Rasmussen is the most handsome prime minister in Europe," Berlusconi said to the surprise of his Danish counterpart. "I'm thinking of introducing him to my wife because he's much more handsome than Cacciari."

The comments were said to have angered Lario.