Italy’s three-time prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is feeling the strains of old age and wants to spend more time with his family, according to an interview due to be published on the eve of his 80th birthday.
Berlusconi was released from hospital after major heart surgery in July, and has not been seen in public since.
He was kicked out of parliament in 2013 following a tax fraud conviction, but remains the leader of the conservative opposition party Forza Italia.
“In my life, I never worried about my age. On the contrary, I always lived as if I was 40, because that’s how old I felt,” he told Chi, a gossip weekly owned by Mondadori, the Berlusconi family publishing group.
“Then, suddenly, illness came. And the surgery I went through really made me realise that I am an 80-year-old man,” Berlusconi said yesterday in extracts from an interview that is due to hit the stands today, a day before the former premier’s birthday.
“I am still unsure about what can be my future. One thing I realised, perhaps the most important, is that I will spend more time with my children and grandchildren,” he added, hinting at his possible retirement.
The scandal-prone billionaire insisted that he “never put a foot wrong” in politics, and said that his oldest child Marina, sometime tipped as his political successor, has become for him “a mother, sister and daughter” figure after the death of his mother.
Twice-divorced and unrepentant playboy Berlusconi also denied rumours of a rift with his latest partner Francesca Pascale, who is 49 years his junior.
“There is no crisis between us, despite what the newspapers insist on writing,” he said.