(Newser) – Maybe Silvio Berlusconi mistook Angela Merkel for a lady on the prowl instead of the leader of one of the globe's more stable economies: The cringe-inducing Italian PM's latest involves a phone conversation—with a newspaper editor, not a fraternity brother—in which he reportedly refers to the 57-year-old German chancellor as "an unf---able fat ass." The phone call turned out to be taped, as these things so often are, and is now making the rounds as part of a blackmail investigation.

A Berlusconi-owned newspaper dismisses the reports as "gossip." Germany's Bild newspaper took the matter somewhat more seriously, yesterday running a headline that read: "Did Berlusconi insult our Chancellor Merkel?" It's not the first time Berlusconi has dissed his German counterpart, reports the Daily Mail. At a summit two years ago, Berlusconi let Merkel cool her heels while he chatted away on the cell phone, while the year before, he pounced on her from behind a statue as he shouted "peek a boo!" (Read more Silvio Berlusconi stories.)

