Videoblog

A view partly from behind the scenes in St Peter’s

… this one has to be in the premier league. Beppe Grillo leaves a Rome hotel after meeting for the first time with the parliamentarians elected for the Five Star Movement, which now holds the balance of power in Italy

Beppe Grillo, besieged by journalists in his seaside Tuscan villa following his Five Star Movement’s extraordinary performance in this week’s election, makes brief ‘appearance’ … Or maybe it’s someone else.

Scenes that no one in Rome — or, indeed, any Catholic — ever expected to see: the Swiss Guards, sworn to protect the pope, symbolically hang up their pikes at 8.00 pm local time on Thursday when Benedict XVI ceases to be their responsibility. What a strange, strange (and still, I suspect, unexplained) story this is.