Mondovi is an interesting town near Cuneo.

Italy is extremely democratic really.  Just about anyone can become a politician here.

Indeed, in amongst the motley crew which inhabit, or have inhabited, Italy’s upper and lower houses of parliament you’ll find: former models, porn stars, cruise ship crooners, social networkers from Sicily, convicted criminals, family friends, etc. etc.

Imagine you want to obtain that most coveted of all full-time jobs in Italy, which you should, as it comes with wonderfully generous expenses packages, perks, and valuable pensions.  If this is indeed the case, then you may well be asking yourself about the qualities you must possess to land a comfy seat in Italy’s cushy parliament.

What follows is a list of the ten qualities you should have.  Qualities which seem to have proven useful to quite a number of Italy’s current bunch of politicians.

On to the Top Ten List.

Skills You Need to become a Successful Politician in Italy

1.  A winning smile and film star good looks.

2. Friendship with Sicilian social networking organisation (Extra points if the Sicilian or your other networking connections can create votes).

3. Some experience of acting (Participants in Big Brother or X-Factor or both, and Oscar winners will have a distinct advantage here).

4. The ability to sleep soundly at night (Obtain advice on this from current Italian politicians Alfano and Ghedini on this).

5. Sound creative accounting skills (Contact British politicians not named by the Telegraph for advice on how to successfully fiddle expenses accounts, for example) .

6. A lose and flexible political ideology (Swinging from left to right helps enormously in Italian politics – Italian left-winger, and communist, Massimo D’Alema even managed to get the support of commie hating Berlusconi recently (Did not do him much good though)).

7. An ego the size of the Milky Way (Possibly related to 4 above and 10 below).

8. A flexible, incoherent concept of honesty, and integrity for that matter (Definitely related to all of the above and what follows too).

9. Willingness to receive gifts and make donations (Sicilian social networking operatives will appreciate this skill).

10. Skin with the consistency of Teflon or other non-stick substance (A year round tan may indicate the use of Teflon-based or equivalent skin care products).

Come to think of it, these skills might help just about anyone become a politician in any country.  Or am I just being cynical?

Feel free to add more ’skills’.

Don’t worry about not being Italian – as long as you can string a few words together in the lingo, your nationality can be changed by certain networkers.

Oh, and for any Italian politicians who may end up reading this, which is a highly remote possibility, I know – this is what is called ’satire’.

Let’s call this flippant Friday.

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I’ve long been a fan of now long defunct punk rock group The Clash.  I found Clash songs powerful, hard edged and catchy, and I love their titles too.  It is the titles of Clash songs which, I have noticed, are rather appropriate to Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s current woes.

Perhaps the best Clash song title is ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?’, which is the question Silvio Berlusconi might be asking himself at the moment.  Certainly some of Berlusconi’s supporters are thinking ‘Should he Stay or Should I Go Now?’.

There are plenty of other Clash songs which seem to sum up Silvio Berlusconi’s pickles too.

Police on My Back

Two other Clash songs which seem to capture Berlusconi’s pickles are ‘Police on My Back’.  Admittedly a re-mixed version entitled ‘Magistrates on My Back’ would sum up Berlusconi’s battles a little better, seeing as he detests Italy’s undoubtedly raving communist magistrates much more than Italy’s police forces.

I Fought the law

On the subject of the recent blow landed by Italy’s constitutional court, there is the Clash song, ‘I Fought the Law and the Law Won’.  This perhaps could be updated to an Italian version with the title ‘I Fought the Constitution and the Constitution Won’.

Last but by no means least, how about the song ‘Career Opportunities’, also by the Clash, as this is something Berlusconi might be considering at the moment.

Finally, how about a song for one of Berlusconi’s allies? Immigrant hating Northern League boss, Umberto Bossi, would no doubt love the song ‘Rock the Casbah‘, although he’d prefer the title ‘Blow Up the Casbah’, most probably.

Actually there are even more Clash songs with titles that sum up the Berlusconi pickle rather well, can you name any of them?

While you are thinking, here is ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ by the Clash for you to listen to (Note to my Pa – you will not like this!):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, if you have not got a Clash album lurking somewhere, head for a cheap music download service and pop a few Clash tracks on your Apple iPhone, iPod, or whatever music player you happen to use.   Then again, you can simply head for YouTube for a listen.

If, on the other hand, you are too young to remember the Clash, check them out.  I don’t think they sound too dated either – and energy never fades away.

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I was raised a Methodist. You remember Methodists. They were the ones who decided that God was wrong about all that wine talk in the Bible, so a former Methodist preacher who later became a dentist got to thinking about all this wrongness and eventually came up with a way to keep grape juice from fermenting, and now Methodists are forced to drink that awful Welch’s Grape Juice at Methodist communion because the dentist’s name was Welch and now I suppose the Welch family is even richer than God which used to be a sin but now sadly isn’t.

Anyway, things are different in Italy, thank God. You can walk into the little village of Barbaresco and sitting pretty on the main square is the Enoteca Regionale del Barbaresco where you can taste and purchase Barbaresco wine which rivals Barolo for the crown of wine tastiness in Piemonte. Thing is, you go inside a church to taste this elixir. Here’s what the Enoteca Regionale del Barbaresco has to say about it:

It is located in Barbaresco inside the building of the former Saint Donato Brotherhood, built by the people of Barbaresco in the middle of the 19th century, as thanksgiving for the wonderful wine production of the hills surrounding the village.

Now, if I may put on my moral thinking cap for just a second, I’d say the people of Barbaresco have the moral edge in this wine thing. I’m thinkin’ that God might love a little thanks instead of all that childish yapping over “you got the wine thing wrong, and the eating pigs thing, and shaving…I mean shaving…”

I gotta go. I hear thunder.

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This post first appeared on Wandering Italy Blog on Thursday, November 19, 2009. It is stolen if you see it anywhere else. Let content thieves know that they are bad people.

There’s a thing about Italy you should know. If you go to a wine region, you’re most likely to get great food even in the smaller, less expensive places. These things go together: wine|food.

So today we arrive in Barolo and check out our digs at TorreBarolo. Sweet. Then we amble down the street about 25 meters and find an osteria. Now, in the old days, an osteria was one of those places that served grizzly old men great heaps of food to keep them working in the vineyards and such. Today, you never know. Our sole reason for picking the place was due to its proximity to our rented tower. We came to find out it served not only good food, but food with a rather spectacular presentation.

The first picture shows you what the simple Zuppa di Verdure (vegetable soup) looks like. You see, it has a cup-like deal made of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese that cradles the croutons smack in the middle of it. That is, when it comes to your table it is a cup—but when the heat from the soup starts to have its way with the cup, it collapses, or better, it unfolds like a flower over the top of your soup, leaving a cheesy web over the top. It’s foodie performance art.

But the zuppa ain’t so purty as the next picture. No, this picture, taken by Martha of Italy Travel, who travels with me because nobody else will, should be in the food picture hall of fame, methinks. What you have is the same Parmigiano cup, but with hot, cheesy fonduta flowing gracefully from it. There’s a half cherry tomato in there for color, as if it were an egg that someone had photoshopped until it glowed with unreal colors. Ok, behind it in the shadows is the actual dish. It’s a tortino di bietole, a swiss chard cake laid in some filo dough and baked. Izat spectacular or what? I mean, click the thumbnail and you’ll see a decent sized rendition of it taken with a darn pocket camera.

A lesser picture, because I took it, is that of my dish, a cotechino sausage set atop some cheese (probably a tomino), and wrapped in a filo “sacchetto”. It has the same fonduta setup as Martha’s. It was quite tasty.

Then Martha had the audacity to order dessert. It is a local thing called bonet. It’s a chocolate pudding cake. Sound plebeian? Look at that sucker, willya?

The whole deal cost us 50 Euros, tax and tip included. It was a great meal that included a glass of Dolcetto and one of Nebbiolo. Oh, the name of the restaurant is Barolando @ Piazza Municipio 2 in Barolo.