Media within hair's breadth of solving Berlusconi riddle

Did he or didn’t he? In a twist on a famous commercial of decades back which proclaimed a woman’s hair secrets were in the hands of her hairdresser, Italian political reporters are trying to get the scoop on Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s new look.

Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, under a photo of a semi-bald Berlusconi, announced it was tackling the ”mystery of the hair transplant” and today quoted a plastic surgeon as saying he had transplanted hair from one part of Berlusconi’s head to another.

Only a day earlier, the surgeon, Piero Rosati, told the same paper as denying he had done a hair transplant on the premier.

Over Christmas, Italian media, with the digging usually associated with investigative reporters, desperately tried to learn if the premier had cosmetic surgery when he disappeared from public view for weeks. It turned out he did -- around his eyes.

Yesterday media billionaire Berlusconi left Italian reporters analysing his quip, “With a little more hair it’s better!” which the premier made to a man on the street while strolling near his villa in Sardinia.

The man was commenting on an attention-grabbing bandanna that Berlusconi had worn while playing host earlier in the week to Premier Tony Blair.

Even while the Italian media were splitting hairs over Berlusconi’s quote, Corriere della Sera said: “The entourage of the premier made it understood that ‘there wasn’t any admission’ on Berlusconi’s part about a hair transplant."