Silvia was born in Milan in 1936, the first of 3 children - Silvia's father Giuseppe organized regular races between his children. After university, Silvia built a successful career in construction where he distinguished himself by becoming the only person in Italian business to avoid any dealings at all with the Mafia, a feat he achieved by exploiting their well-known homophobia. As Mafia don Tomasso Buscetta said during his 1986 trial, 'We all wanted to get our hands on Berlusconi's operation but we were afraid he would fancy us!'
During the 1970s, Silvia became bored with building buildings and decided instead to build a media empire. Over the next 20 years he became his country's most successful media mogul, earning him the soubriqet 'Italy's Robert Maxwell.' His great success and resultant wealth were not, however, enough to satisfy the great man. His country was sadly in decline, the laughing stock of Europe. Silvia could see that his country needed him and he entered the body politic.
Berlusconi's domestic politics have been generally popular and uncontroversial as he has enacted many much-needed laws like those designed to stop politicians being prosecuted for crimes. The greatest controversy of his premiership came with his support for the Iraq War. Italians were unconcerned with the support itself - they correctly assumed that they would follow their long established policy of changing sides half way through - but concerns were raised after it was alleged that Silvia had only supported the war because he had a crush on Donald Rumsfeld. The resulting scandal did a great deal of damage to Italio-American relations which sunk to their lowest point since Mussolini's famous 1938 speech in which he mocked Roosevelt's support for the Boy Scouts as being, 'A bit fruity.'
Luckily, the change of President in 2009 brought a fresh start - one which Silvia grasped in masterly fashion by paying warm complement to the new President's tan.
