Controversies aside, Silvio Berlusconi was so part of the political landscape in Italy that he seemed to be almost eternal. I am 46, and when he turned to politics, in 1994, I was still too young to vote. The first elections, as an Italian citizen, I voted for, in 1996, was already a referendum pro or against Berlusconi.

While Berlusconi was a controversial figure for his scandals, he was also considered controversial for the innovation he brought to Italian politics. He was the first politician to use TV and media in full awareness of their potential. If you watch the political debates of 1994, it is almost as if he and the others went at different speeds.

He presented himself as an outsider to the world of politics. And even after the twenty years he was in politics, he was somewhat perceived as a non-politician. In a sense, he invented contemporary populism, that anti-political sentiment later incarnated and channelled by characters like Donald Trump. When the US was shocked by Trump’s tactics, for me it was nothing new. I had seen the very same strategies at play, twenty years before.