ALBERICI: The Venice Film Festival has become one of the world’s unmissable events for the A to Z of celebrities. Hollywood superstars go out of their way to get here, so too the new generation of instant identities. Most of the Italian stars here have made a name for themselves on television – most only recognised by the locals. It’s a celebration of the famous and the infamous.

[sitting in gondola together] “Your life is completely different now, isn’t it?”

PATRICIA D’ADDARIO: “Yes, everyone says to me, keep going… have courage.”

ALBERICI: Patricia D’Addario doesn’t have a TV or a movie career and yet most Italians know exactly who she is. She’s the escort who slept with their prime minister and the paparazzi can’t get enough of her.

PATRIZIA D’ADDARIO: “Everybody knew that I was an escort, even the other girls talked about it. Right from the start I didn’t need to say that I was an escort. I mean obviously, I would have been lying about what was a reality.”

ALBERICI: In most other parts of the world, if a tall blonde prostitute slept with a married man who led a nation, it would be a scandal that would destroy a career and seriously damage a government, but not here and not with this leader who includes singing and dancing with the pillow talk.

PATRIZIA D’ADDARIO: “We talked about everything. I had a slow dance with him as well. He came up to me and we talked and he sang some songs.”

RECORDING OF MALE VOICE: “I’m going to have a shower too, eh and then will you wait for me in the bed, if you finish first?”

PATRIZIA D’ADDARIO: “Which bed? Putin’s?”

ALBERICI: It’s claimed that the voice on this recording is that of Silvio Berlusconi, President of the G8 and leader of the third biggest economy in Europe. Seventy-three years old, enduringly tanned and irrepressible all round party guy – parties that include scores of beautiful young women.

PATRIZIA D’ADDARIO: “For him, these parties are a way of meeting new girls - at least that was my experience. Really for the girls, it’s clear form the start that this is an opportunity – an easy way to climb the ladder to success – especially for those who want to be in the entertainment business.”

ALBERICI: What puzzles outsiders is why so many Italians put up with their Prime Minister’s behaviour and how Mr Berlusconi gets away with it. But asking those sorts of questions isn’t easy here. And they’re not questions that Mr Berlusconi’s female ministers can bear either.

MINISTER GIORGIA MELONI: [Irate] “What else do I have to do? What are you people saying? You’re spreading a pack of lies, throughout the world! This is intolerable because you are playing with our democracy. You are playing with our national pride. You’re inventing things. It’s not tolerable. I’m sorry, it’s just not tolerable! [standing up to leave] I’m very proud to be Italian.

ALBERICI: [In Italian] “Me too, I am proud to be Italian too.”

As much as anything this is a personal story. As an Italian who grew up in Australia, I’ve come here to find out what’s going on in this great country, how one of Europe’s richest men is using his power to fight the Church, the press, even his own wife and how Silvio Berlusconi – the man they call Il Cavalier – the cavalier – is trying to change Italy by recruiting beautiful women to help him.

I’ve come to Ischia, an island off the coast of Naples. It’s one of the country’s chief tourist destinations. People who live here, along with many in the south of Italy, often feel neglected by the cental government.

This is my cousin Carmine Porto whose family have run this restaurant for thirty years. My uncle, Franco Porto has been cooking here since the 60’s. He and Silvio Berlusconi launched their businesses in about the same year. They’re fans of the PM because the way they see it, Mr Berlusconi is an example of what you can achieve if you work hard.

CARMINE PORTO: “Berlusconi more than anything… with us having a commercial business we like his open mind, his entrepreneurial attitude – that’s what helps you get ahead and look towards the future.

ALBERICI: At a table of friends who’ve come for lunch, opinions vary widely about just how effective this prime minister is. Not because of his sexual dalliances and whether or not he’s fully focused on his day job, but the credentials of the many of the women he’s appointed to his government.

NICOLA: “I don’t see these people being chosen for their skills. Today Italy needs skills.”

ALBERICI: One of the talking points here of course is about the tourism industry because Ischia being an island is all about its tourism. Now my second cousin twice removed in-law here is in the industry and he’s lamenting the fact that their tourism minister has been recruited from the ranks of showgirls, that she’s not necessarily therefore committed to the cause and that is something that is particularly infuriating for the people of this island.

This is a place where looking good is a national obsession and of course it’s a place with more than its fair share of smart, beautiful women but in recent years, Silvio Berlusconi has plucked quite a number of women out of nowhere and promoted them into positions of immense power and influence.

If there was any doubt that Mr Berlusconi likes to surround himself with beautiful people, you only have to check out his ministry. It’s the credentials of some of the PM’s leading ladies that has many Italians feeling a little embarrassed.

This is Mara Carfagna in Parliament. The PM famously said that he’d marry her if he wasn’t already taken of course. This is how Mara Carfagna looked when Mr Berlusconi first met her. Hers was a meteoric rise form television presenter/nude model/calendar girl and Miss Italy finalist. After last year’s election, Mr Berlusconi gave her a prized job in his executive and so Mara Carfagna is now Italy’s Minister for Equal Opportunities.

Elisa Alloro has also attracted Silvio Berlusconi’s attention. She was working as a part time model and as a television reporter for one of his networks when he invited her to his home in Sardinia for an interview. He then suggested she run for a place in the European Parliament.

“If you were to enter politics, what would be your priority?”

ELISA ALLORO: “Well, I’m on the side of women… intelligent women.”

ALBERICI: Elisa Alloro insists that there is nothing improper about her relationship with the Prime Minister and that his only interest in her was to help bolster the female numbers in Parliament.

ELISA ALLORO: “For him it’s okay, he’s a public figure. But for us, just because we work in television, do we deserve to be constantly wounded? Because that’s what it is.”

DAVID LANE: “Unfortunately there has been a degeneration in politics. We have got young women elected because they are friends of powerful people.”

ALBERICI: Author David Lane has been watching Silvio Berlusconi for some time. Eight years ago, he concluded Mr Berlusconi was not fit to govern Italy and wrote a scalding piece saying so. He hasn’t changed his mind.

DAVID LANE: “Berlusconi is also a man of considerable energy and I think he’s shown that. He’s shown it as a businessman, he’s shown it as a politician. Now considerable energy, some people consider him to be a man of considerable charm. I think charm is a very kind of subjective issue. Other people might see it as vulgarity what some people see as charm.”

VIDEOCRACY: [showing of footage] “People called in. If they came up with the right answer, the housewife in the studio would start to take off her clothes.”

ALBERICI: Long before he was prime minister and after he wrapped an early career as a cruise ship crooner, Silvio Berlusconi turned businessman and turned to television. This is one of the first TV shows produced by Mr Berlusconi in the 70s. It set the tone for what was to come. Italian television’s fixation with scantily clad and semi naked women.

VIDEOCRACY: [woman stripping on TV] “What none of us knew was that this was the birth of the television of the president, the beginning of the cultural revolution.”

ERIK GANDINI: [Filmmaker] “You can say that without these girls and without the female body, Berlusconi would never have gained the economical power and the power that he’s gained through these years.”

ALBERICI: In Erik Gandini’s documentary “Videocracy” we’re given a glimpse of how fierce the competition is for a chance to be seen on TV. From the start, a feature of Italian television was the showgirl or veline. Like me, Erik Gandini is an Italian who’s spent most of his life viewing Italy from a distance.

ERIK GANDINI: “Living in Sweden I always get this question, ‘what’s the problem with Italy?’ People laugh a lot about Italy, especially Berlusconi of course. They laugh about Italian TV.”

ALBERICI: They may laugh about Italian TV but Silvio Berlusconi is laughing all the way to the bank. From those early grainy moments of a tawdry TV dawn, he’s built a massive media empire. Forbes Magazine puts his family’s fortune at 8 billion dollars. People connect with his story, the self-made billionaire who rose from nothing to become a media baron, the owner of the AC Milan Football Club and Prime Minister three times in the past fifteen years. But it’s his media that helps him shape or suppress scandal.

EZIO MAURO: “One must consider this fact – when this program is broadcast the Australian television audience will know more about this affair than the Italian audience knows.”

ALBERICI: Ezio Mauro’s respected daily La Republica, has been trying to ask the Prime Minister about his affairs. Every day for four months the newspaper has printed the same ten questions. Silvio Berlusconi refuses to answer them and is now suing the newspaper for daring to ask them. Ezio Mauro’s main competition is owned by the Prime Minister’s family, who also own or control 80% of the television market.

EZIO MAURO: “An independent research group found after the last European elections that 82% of Italians made their final decisions about who to vote for, exclusively from television.”

ALBERICI: If you ask questions or criticise, prepare for retribution even if you’re backed by the Vatican. When an influential church paper recently called on Silvio Berlusconi to show more seriousness, the editor Dino Boffi was attacked in the Berlusconi press. They labelled him a homosexual and forced his resignation.

DAVID LANE: “Ordinary people say this is indecent, this is improper, this is disgusting, this is totally unacceptable and it was that revolution from below that forced the church to say no, things have gone too far.”

ALBERICI: But it’s in the rarefied air of the billionaire’s club that Silvio Berlusconi likes to throw his weight around and where the line gets blurred between his personal and political decision making.

We’re in the studio’s of Sky Italia, owned by another very powerful media proprietor by the name of Rupert Murdoch, and once again we’re surrounded by beautiful girls vying desperately for a career in front of the camera.

Sky Italia is replicating Silvio Berlusconi’s ratings winning formula but they’ll have to work twice as hard. This year Mr Berlusconi the Prime Minister doubled Sky Italia’s tax rate and that can’t be bad for Mr Berlusconi, media magnate.

DAVID LANE: “So having control over television means that you determine what news items are covered and how they’re covered and he’s done that very openly.”

ALBERICI: Now back to Mr Berlusconi, the lady’s man. Underwear model Noemi Letizia invited the Prime Minister to her 18th birthday party. Not only did he turn up, but the man she calls Dadi bought her a special gift, a ten thousand dollar diamond and gold necklace.

It was the last straw for Silvio Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario. She filed for divorce claiming that her husband had been promoting – quote shameless female trash to position of power and that he was sick and needed help to cure his sex addiction.

EZIO MAURO: “Meanwhile, this story exploded because the Prime Minister’s wife - the First Lady of Italy - declared in the most public way, “my husband frequented minors”.”

ALBERICI: Talk of the Prime Minister’s peccadillos manages to hijack even his engagements with foreign diplomats. Here at a press conference with the Spanish Prime Minister, important policy issues were swamped by media interest in his private life. A Spanish newspaper had just published photos of near naked women partying with Mr Berlusconi at his beach villa.

PRIME MINISTER BERLUSCONI: “In my life I have never even once had to give money for sexual services. And I’ll tell you why as well. Because as someone who enjoys conquering, the greatest joy and satisfaction is the conquest.”

ALBERICI: But when he’s out in public, it’s back to the dodging and weaving.

[Calling out to him in scuffle in crowd] “Prime Minister, why aren’t you answering the questions?”

The Prime Minister prefers to talk at length and uninterrupted to an adoring audience of three thousand supporters, alongside him is his loyal Youth Affairs Minister, Giorgia Meloni.

PRIME MINISTER BERLUSCONI: “I’m happy to be sitting here next to Giorgia.”

ALBERICI: Mr Berlusconi talks about his achievements for an hour and a half and portrays himself as a visionary who led all others in the response to the global financial crisis.

PRIME MINISTER BERLUSCONI: “Then came the financial crisis…we were the only ones who predicted it.”

ALBERICI: And in his only reference to the extra-curricular issues, he jokes about his wife’s accusations of sexual addiction.

PRIME MINISTER BERLUSCONI: “Just as well I was sick – imagine what I could have done if I wasn’t.”

ALBERICI: When Mr Berlusconi left the stage I got the opportunity to speak to one of his four female ministers, Giorgia Meloni who started her career in politics at fifteen as a student activist.

GIORGIA MELONI: “I think frankly, Italians are interested in other things. They want to know what Silvio Berlucsoni’s doing for the good of the nation – and frankly his sexual relations are of very little interest.”

ALBERICI: “Does it seem right to you that the Prime Minister doesn’t respond to the questions?”

GIORGIA MELONI: “No, excuse me, no… look! I don’t know where you think we are, but we’re in Italy - a modern republic. You have a press conference, and the newspapers send their journalists. They choose which ones. And the journalists come and ask questions. It’s the same as happens in the rest of the world. He is not choosing who he faces.”

ALBERICI: It was a little more civil when we sat down with Italy’s Foreign Minister. Franco Frattini is one of Silvio Berlusconi’s closest friends in government and he wasn’t about to be drawn on anything other than the serious business of Italian politics.

“The Prime Minister’s now in his mid seventies, is he showing any signs at all of tiring of public life?”

FRANCO FRATTINI: “No, he’s not. He’s absolutely not. He’s absolutely sure to last for the legislature. Legislature will end in 2013. We have a very solid majority in the parliament. The problem that we have not yet a real united and constructive opposition. This is the problem.”

ALBERICI: Italy has a history of defending freedom throughout the world, and yet now there seems to be a bit of contradiction in the way it’s attacking its media at home, just over the mere fact that people dare to ask questions.

FRANCO FRATTINI: “Well we respect completely all the freedoms, we are fighting for freedoms but we want to be respected.”

ALBERICI: And Elisa Alloro who counts herself among Mr Berlusconi’s friends, says foreigners should lighten up and stop being too judgemental. Her path to a seat in the European Parliament was blocked by the latest scandal surrounding the Prime Minister.

ELISA ALLORO: “In Italy above all else – but I think all over the world – if you’re good looking it’s easy for people to see just what’s on the outside. It’s difficult to have long legs and an intelligent smile.”

ALBERICI: Patrizia D’Addario will always be remembered as the escort who bedded the Prime Minister. She also claims the PM offered her a job on TV or in politics. A crime commission is now investigating the hiring of dozens of prostitutes to party at Mr Berlusconi’s official residence in Rome. The PM doesn’t have to worry though, he’s passed laws giving him immunity from prosecution.

PATRIZIA D’ADDARIO: “I know just one thing… that up until now I’m the only one who’s told the truth. This situation has become very hard for me because I’m the only one who’s told the truth.”

ALBERICI: To understand the Prime Minister’s ways is to understand Italy. A beautiful place where being sexy and smart is a road to success and where a woman who’s not afraid to be photographed semi naked, might just become the prime minister herself.