Silvio Berlusconi and his wife Veronica Lario. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
Don't you just hate it when an argument with your partner spills over into public, perhaps some cross words exchanged at a party or a yelling match on the street?
If so - and this is not a sentiment commonly expressed - have some pity for Silvio Berlusconi.
The billionaire media magnate and former Italian prime minister woke up this morning to find a complaining letter from his wife splashed across the front page of a national newspaper.
In the missive, gleefully picked up by media around the world, Veronica Berlusconi demands a public apology from her 70-year-old husband for what she called sexist comments that were "damaging to my dignity".
Adding salt to the wounds, the letter was initially handed to left-leaning newspaper La Repubblica, a persistent critic of Mr Berlusconi.
The spat began after reports of the ex-PM's flirtatious comments on a TV awards show. "If I weren't married I would marry you immediately," he told one woman. "With you I'd go anywhere," he said to another.
Mrs Berlusconi, a 50-year-old former actress who married her husband in 1990, was not amused, her letter suggests strongly:
"These are affirmations that I see as damaging to my dignity, affirmations that ... cannot be reduced to jokes. To my husband and to the public man I therefore ask for a public apology, having not received one privately."
Mr Berlusconi has yet to respond, at least in public. But in an unfortunate coincidence, in other comments made just before the letter was published, he expressed gratitude that his wife "has never made a fool out of me".
