The vice-president of the Italian Senate, Maurizio Gasparri, (pictured) took to tweeting at 2am just after Italy’s World Cup win over England.
“It’s always a pleasure to say “go ... themselves” to the English ... pretentious and pricks,” he tweeted.
Mr Gasparri used the word coglioni which literally means testicles, but is used as an offensive means of calling someone a prick or an arsehole. The blank can be filled with a number of verbs, perhaps treat or amuse, but there’s another active verb which usually fills in such a blank.
But the upshot is that calls have been mounting in the Italian media for his resignation.
Mr Gasparri is known for his frank tweets, including his “al-Qaida is happier” comment when Barak Obama was elected in November 2008.
On this occasion, he responded to calls for him to apologise or step down with the clarification “Detestable English, is that okay?”
“After the insults toward the English – calling the foreign minister, journalists, ex-ministers and everyday citizens ‘pricks’, it would be appropriate to take Twitter out of his hands for awhile,” wrote David Allegranti in Wired Italy. “For his own good, and also for ours …”
Mr Gasparri, a centre-right politician, was minister of communications under Silvio Berlusconi.
