Berlusconi’s daughter ‘amazed’ at link with teenage model

One of Silvio Berlusconi's five children has finally spoken out in public against her 72-year-old father's behaviour. Barbara Berlusconi said she was "amazed" to learn of his friendship with a teenage model, Noemi Letizia, and said that politicians must know that they cannot make a distinction between their public life and private life.

Barbara, 25, the eldest child of Berlusconi's three children with his second wife, Veronica Lario, made her remarks in an interview with the Italian edition of Vanity Fair.

Asked about the contradiction between her father's behaviour and his enduring popularity - despite all the scandals, his approval rating among Italians remains close to 50 per cent - she said: "I think that a society expresses a common sense of morality.

"Political representatives who are called to govern well, make society prosper, are also held to safeguard the values they express, possibly raise them. So I don't believe a politician can allow a distinction between his public and private life."

Veronica Lario announced in May that she intended to file for divorce following reports that her husband turned up at the 18th birthday party of Noemi Letizia, who called him 'Papi', bearing a €6,000 necklace as a gift. Lario made the point that her husband had never found time to attend his own children's birthday parties.

But Barbara told Vanity Fair: "I want to be close to both my parents, because what does not come out is that their suffering is profound and touches them both."

Asked about her father's links with Noemi Letizia, she said: "It's something that has never been part of my life. I have never frequented elderly men. I have no experience of such psychological ties."

Berlusconi has never delivered on his promise to explain in parliament his relationship with Letizia. As for the more recent scandal involving callgirl Patrizia D'Addario, who claims to have recorded their night of passion together at his Rome residence, the prime minister has said simply that he is "no saint".

However, the scandal appears to have taken its toll: Berlusconi has been complaining of chronic neck pain and has spent the first days of his summer holiday trying to overcome his stress under the supervision of three doctors flown in from a clinic in South Tyrol.