Italy's right-wing leader Silvio Berlusconi, whose height has long captivated his country's satirists, said he was bigger than Vladimir Putin or Nicolas Sarkozy, ANSA agency reported.

"I am taller than Putin and Sarkozy, I'm tall like (Romano) Prodi," he said of the country's outgoing premier, whose centre-left coalition collapsed in January.

"I'm 1.71 metres tall (five foot six inches). I don't understand why all the caricaturists portray me as a dwarf, whereas the others are allowed a normal height," he told an election rally in the north of the country.