Mr Silvio Berlusconi wore his most seductive smile, but the former Italian prime minister did not find it easy yesterday as he attempted to convince the foreign press that three corruption convictions in the space of eight months was just so much water off a duck's back.
Mr Berlusconi, the leader of the centre-right opposition, visited Rome's Foreign Press Club to tell the world that he was the victim of a politically motivated witchhunt but that his prestige as a political leader was still intact.
Wearing a dark blue suit and his trademark polka-dot blue tie, Mr Berlusconi exuded the charm he originally picked up as a singer and entertainer performing for cruise ship passengers.
The sun-tanned businessman-turned-politician reassured some 200 foreign reporters crowded into a sweaty conference room that he still hoped to return to power, repeating the astonishing success that swept his newly formed Forza Italia Party into government in 1994.
Many were beginning to wonder whether he had not become a political liability following his convictions for false accounting, the bribing of tax officials and the illegal funding of political parties - the last two coming in less than a week.
Mr Berlusconi conceded that Milan's anti-corruption magistrates had performed a useful role by tackling a system of political corruption that had run out of control. But he insisted that a politically biased minority within the judiciary was now attempting to eliminate one of the country's biggest political parties to pave the way for a communist-style totalitarian regime.
"We cannot allow people to rewrite the history of the country as though it was a purely criminal history. We cannot tolerate the elimination of democratic parties as a result of trials based on political prejudice," Mr Berlusconi said. "You may wonder how I manage to remain the most popular politician in the country. It's because all these crimes, which provide magistrates with the opportunity to indict people, are not perceived as crimes by ordinary people."
He said his Fininvest broadcasting and publishing group had been run in accordance with strict standards of accountability and morality, but had been forced to pay bribes to finance police tax inspectors in order to avoid having its activities paralysed.
A Spanish magistrate who is investigating him on suspicion of having violated the country's broadcasting laws had become "infected by the same virus as the Milan magistrates," he said.
And the law, which restricts foreign ownership of television companies to 25 per cent, ran counter to the principles of a free market, he insisted.
Mr Berlusconi's attempts to woo the foreign reporters were not particularly successful, judging from the hostile tone of many of the questions. But he was at his least convincing when he attempted to suggest that crimes that were not considered by a majority of the population as grave did not deserve sanction.
Illegal funding of political parties or under-the-table payments in connection with the transfer of soccer players, both of which charges have been levelled against him, did not do anyone any harm and were not considered grave by the majority of the population, he said.
Mr Berlusconi's angry reaction to being found guilty, and opposition calls for a parliamentary inquiry into alleged political bias in the judiciary have raised the political temperature in Italy to fever pitch. Increasingly serious accusations against Mr Berlusconi have begun to surface in the press and the former prime minister said he had just begun a libel suit against a leading Italian journalist who wrote that he was under investigation for allegedly laundering Mafia money.
Yesterday, newspapers reported that a Sicilian businessman had accused a leading Forza Italia MP of having accepted funding from Cosa Nostra for the party in 1993. It will take all Mr Berlusconi's powers of persuasion to prevent these kind of allegations and the corruption trials that still lie ahead of him from crippling him as a political leader.