Standing in the sun outside Milan’s San Raffaele hospital last September, Silvio Berlusconi, the great survivor of Italian politics, recounted the story of his latest remarkable escape.
“I told myself: ‘You have got away with it again’,” the tanned and grinning tycoon told his cheering supporters, recounting his battle with Covid-19. Having contracted the virus on holiday at his villa in Sardinia he developed double pneumonia while already recovering from a heart attack.
Berlusconi, who for decades has seduced Italy with tales of entrepreneurial daring and stamina, insisted that his viral load had been “the highest among tens of thousands of patients” at the Milan hospital.