Premier Silvio Berlusconi would have a ''ring of his own'' in Dante's Inferno, Oscar-winning film-maker Roberto Benigni said Tuesday.
The Tuscan comic-actor-director, who last year wowed TV audiences with a show combining wicked satire with fervent Dante readings, said the premier's personal ring would be ''made with a law just for him'', referring to laws allegedly tailor-made for him.
Benigni told news weekly L'Espresso that Berlusconi would make an excellent guide to 14th-century poet's nine rings of hell.
''I could make him do a tour of all the people in hell: the lechers, the swindlers, those who buy pardons, the liars, the idiots. He'd fit in everywhere, he'd be a protagonist,'' Benigni said.
Damning most of the country's politicians, he said Dante would only ''shake the hand'' of 10% of members of parliament, describing 10% as ''the worst'' and the remaining 80% as ''mediocre''.
Benigni shot to international fame in 1999 with his Holocaust movie Life Is Beautiful, which he wrote, starred in and directed.
The picture won three Oscars, for best foreign film, best actor and best music, and Benigni's exuberant clowning at the Academy Picture award ceremony won him fans around the world.
Last year Dante Alighieri scholars were impressed by his unorthodox approach to the masterpiece, praising the Tuscan comic's grasp of the symbolism and references in the chosen sections of the Divine Comedy, which is the most lauded work of Italian literature.
Benigni was awarded Italy's highest civilian honour, the Cavaliere di Gran Croce, in 2005.
