ITALY: In the end, he just could not wait to show off his "new look". After spending almost one month unusually out of the public eye, during which time he underwent plastic surgery for a face-lift, Italian Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi returned from his luxury villa in Sardinia on Thursday night to make a surprise first public "reappearance" in front of the television cameras, writes Paddy Agnew in Rome
The prime minister's advisers had assured us that he would not reappear in public until attending a gala convention of his own party, Forza Italia, in Rome today.
Evidently, Mr Berlusconi decided otherwise. For when he went out shopping in Rome's Via Coronari, reportedly to buy a gift for his dinner guest, Spanish Prime Minister Mr Josè Maria Aznar, he did so to the accompaniment of television cameras.
He looked and sounded fitter and better than ever, telling reporters: "Me missing? Me at the centre of a great mystery? Not at all. I just stopped in to have a little service job done I was working the whole time, even if I did allow myself three hours each day to get back into shape. I had a good laugh, too, reading all the speculation made up by the papers."
So, then, how does he look? Answer, just like anyone who has just had a face-lift, namely tighter and sharper around the face, seemingly younger but slightly mummified. Those well versed in the plastic surgeon's craft, however, suggest that some swelling around the eyes might be indicative of a less than perfect job.
That might well be. What remains unanswered is whether his face-lift will achieve its aim, namely that of reviving his apparently declining political fortunes.