While there are those who comfort themselves in the depths of the night with the idea that il Cavaliere, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister and one of the world’s richest men, is, simply put, a buffoon, not so seasoned media watchers like Umberto Eco.

Last year, speaking to a packed audience in Bologna (on the occasion of the launch of the book L’Opposizione al Governo Berlusconi), Eco pondered whether anyone had noticed the strange patterns of Berlusconi’s media ‘moments’, those wonderful episodes ranging from the concentration camp guard jibe, through to the suggestion that judges are genetically crazy. The theory of the intelligent cavaliere, as we’ll call it, suggests that when Berlusconi is in the news for all the wrong reasons, you can bet your bottom dollar that there’s something else important happening elsewhere.