Now here's the kind of question we wish more interviewers would ask.

Jeremy Paxman, one of the BBC's most infamously caustic journalists, was talking to disgraced former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and put this to him:

"Did you have a particular problem with Angela Merkel? Is it true you called her an ‘unf--kable lard-a--?'"

Berlusconi's initial response could be summed up as "uh...." which is probably what the audience was thinking.