Cicchitto tells the story of Lavitola, the theoretical philosopher of roguery who even managed to pull the wool over Berlusconi’s eyes

Now Rai is taking ‘Report’ off him and they might even cut back on his security detail, but the doubt will remain forever: did Sigfrido Ranucci play the fool to make fools of us, or is he really a fool? “We’ll never know whether he realised that Lavitola had planted the bomb to do him a favour. But I do understand Ranucci a bit, you see. He’s a Lavitola victim. You have to bear in mind what sort of man Valter is. I know him. He’s the sort who even managed to wrap Berlusconi round his little finger.” Fabrizio Cicchitto, a Socialist leader and later one of the men closest to ‘Il Cavaliere’, knew Lavitola – nicknamed ‘Valterino’ – back in the Craxi days; he found himself dealing with him again through ‘Il Cavaliere’, and dined with him several times at the famous Cefalù in Monteverde. “Not great,” he says. And the shucked clams? “Mine even had garlic in them.”

We rang him up to get him to explain how you go about selling the premiership to an investigative journalist, complete with a poll to be paid for in instalments. Anyone who’s had a well-meaning friend knows how hard it is to stop them. They cook for you, book you a dentist’s appointment, blow up your Peugeot. “When you think of Lavitola, you have to picture a sort of Totò Sciosciammocca who sends Pasquale to ask, in exchange for an old coat, for thirty metres of sausage, twenty kilos of pasta, ten packets of sauce, eight litres of wine and a box of cigars,” says Cicchitto. Barely twenty years old, at the Socialist Party congress in Rimini, Lavitola turned up with a chauffeur, and everyone – even Bobo Craxi, who remembers him well – laughed at his show-off behaviour. In the Berlusconi era, which was his golden age, however, he was promising ministerial posts: “I know it’s your time; get a grip – I’ve spoken to Him.” He boasted of meetings with the Vatican Secretary of State. He announced he was on the verge of joining the government: “I’ve asked for Gianni Letta’s portfolio.” Machiavelli, publisher, politician, fishmonger. Cicchitto says: “He’s a theoretical philosopher of roguery, absolutely charming. Someone who knows how to win over the most diverse range of people. I, for one, found him amusing because of the tall tales he told, but there are those who believe his tall tales. Not least because he tells them so well. Berlusconi pretended to believe him, and used him. Lavitola went round claiming to be the lover of Fini’s girlfriend – utter madness. And Berlusconi pretended to believe it because he needed him in his war against Fini. Now, it’s one thing to have a laugh with Lavitola, quite another to go along with him.”

And what about Ranucci? “We’re right in the thick of the farce. There’s one individual who thinks he’s Napoleon and another who tells him, ‘Yes, you are’, sending him into raptures.” And then he plants a bomb on him. “The funny thing is, it actually worked. After the bang, Ranucci goes to the ANM to take his applause. Hundreds of magistrates on their feet in the Great Hall of the Court of Cassation.” But come to that, is this Ranucci a shrewd individual or a fool? “He’s a crook.”