On the occasion of the death of Silvio Berlusconi, Twitter is saying goodbye and “deifying” the controversial Italian tycoon and politician, with videos characteristic of his personality.

In one of them, in April 2004, Berlusconi as Prime Minister of Italy participates in a summit in Germany, hosted by Angela Merkel.

The chancellor welcomes her guests and Cavaliere, getting out of the car, leaves Merkel waiting for him and walks away to talk on the phone, turning his back on her!

Four-time Italian prime minister and billionaire media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who died today aged 86, had a peculiar sense of humor that sometimes got him into trouble.

Here are some of his most memorable gaffes and rants:

DECEMBER 2022: Berlusconi tells the players of his football team, her Monzathat he will bring them “a busload of whores to the dressing room” if they manage to beat a Serie A rival.

OCTOBER 2022: Despite outrage in the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Berlusconi remained steadfast in declaring for his old friend Vladimir Putin: “Putin sent me 20 bottles for my birthday vodka and a very sweet letter. I responded by sending him bottles of Lambrusco and an equally sweet letter.”

NOVEMBER 2010: “As always I’m working non-stop and if I ever happen to look a pretty girl in the face, it’s better to like pretty girls than to be gay,” he says during a motorsport show in Milan.

OCTOBER 2010: Berlusconi incurs the wrath of the Vatican’s official newspaper when he says one anecdote about a Jew who charges other Jews to hide them in his basement from the Nazis without revealing to them that World War II is over.

APRIL 2009: During his visit to the survivors of a earthquake in central Italy’s Abruzzo region, who were temporarily living in tents, Berlusconi says: “They should see it as camping the weekend”.

NOVEMBER 2008: Berlusconi welcomes Barack’s election Obamaof a “charming, young and tanned from the sun man” — of the first African-American president of the United States.

When he later met with the US Presidential couple, Cavaliere again commented on Michelle Obama’s exotic “tan”….

FEBRUARY 2006: “I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I tolerate everyone, I sacrifice for everyone,” Berlusconi told his supporters, according to Italian media.

JUNE 2005: Berlusconi says he used his charm to persuade Finland’s president, Taria Halonen, to drop her country’s bid to host the new European Food Safety Authority. “I had to use all my tricks of the trade playboyeven though I hadn’t used them for a long time,” he declares, provoking the protest of the Finnish ambassador.

SEPTEMBER 2004: “Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini was sending people on vacations in (internal) exile,” Berlusconi tells the British Spectator magazine, answering in the affirmative to the question of whether he thinks the World War II dictator was a “scoundrel”.

JULY 2003: “Sir SchultzI know that in Italy there is a producer who is making a film about the Nazi concentration camps. I would like to recommend you for the role of Kapo. It would suit you perfectly,” he tells German MP Martin Schulz who interrupts him on his MEP debut. (PS: Kapos were Nazi concentration camp inmates who were given privileges to supervise others’ work groups prisoners).

JUNE 2003: “One citizen is equal to another (in the eyes of the law), but this one here is perhaps more equal than the others given that 50% of Italians gave him the responsibility to rule the country,” Berlusconi says, referring to himself during his appearance in a trial accused of corruption, in Milan.

FEBRUARY 2002: During the family photo at an informal EU summit in Spain, Berlusconi made “corneas” (the gesture one makes for a cheating spouse) to Spain’s then foreign minister, Josep Pique.

OCTOBER 2001: Berlusconi angers the Muslim world when he says the West “should be aware of the superiority of our culture”. He comments that while the West has a value system “which has given people widespread prosperity in the countries that adopt it and guarantees respect for human rights and religion … this respect is certainly absent in Islamic countries”.