News

Berlusconi in star-studded company

November 24, 2009 Edition 2

ROME: The Italian edition of music magazine Rolling Stone said yesterday it has elected sex scandal-plagued Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as its 2009 Rock Star of the Year.

Berlusconi, a former cruise ship crooner who continues to record Neapolitan love songs, did not win the title based on musical merits, the magazine indicated.

The 73-year-old media magnate-turned-politician earned it "with a lifestyle for which the rock 'n' roll definition seems even to be reductive", Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Carlo Antonelli said.

"Rod Stewart, Brian Jones and Keith Richards are greenhorns in comparison to Mr Berlusconi," he added, referring to rock stars whose philandering or drug-related excesses made headlines in the past.

Berlusconi took legal action earlier this year to block the publication of photographs in which topless young women were seen cavorting at his sprawling Sardinian villa.

Reports also emerged of young women paid to attend parties by Berlusconi at the villa and his Rome residence, while a self-described prostitute claimed she spent a night with the premier. - Sapa-dpa

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