Italian TV game shows are a true anthropological artefact.They are not only from another era, they are from an entirely other planet.

[ 23 July 2004: Message edited by: Critical Mass ]

Silvio Berlusconi, the man who made sex boring:

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Mediaset's satirical news review, Striscia la Notizia (Strip the News), the showcase for the country's most high-profile television hostesses, drew 12 million viewers in 2002. This year, viewing figures have at times sunk to an all-time low of five million. Research has shown that it is the point at which the women start dancing on the newsdesk that the viewers switch off.

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*snicker*

This part is actually not all that funny:

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Indeed, she is such an institution that she has even entered the dictionary. A velina (plural veline ) is defined in this year's Zingarelli dictionary as "a young television assistant who exhibits herself in succinct clothes during a transmission". Those women who don't qualify as veline can content themselves with less glamorous roles, such as letterine (women who hold the letters up), numerine (women who hold the numbers up) or microfonine (women who hold the microphones).

The most successful veline are at the heart of Italian celebrity culture, and can earn a fortune. And while audiences appear to be turning off, there are still plenty of young women who want to be on television. "I'm the one who is using this show, to get myself noticed," says Virginia Battista, a 23-year-old economics student at Rome University, as she waits for her two minute "sexiness test" (a short dance routine). "I don't think there's anything degrading about showing your body on TV. If you've got a good one, why not use it? Anyone else would."

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Yeah, we hear that one over here as well, most recently from the baristas at the Calgary Stampede.

But obviously more and more Italians have had enough of that logic. Good for Lilli Gruber; may her tribe increase.