Ilona Staller, guest of honour 1st of March 2025

The Pleasures of the Flesh

When an opportunity arises, which more often than not happens out of the blue, you should always grab it. Always.

When we, at Parnassos.dk, were offered the chance to contact the former politician and actress, Mrs. Ilona Staller, we quickly realized that she would be the ideal person to have as guest of honour for our big event in Rome on the 1^st March 2025.

An e-mail correspondence ensued and she seemed sympathetic to our suggestion. But before she would make a firm commitment, she wanted to meet me for lunch, so we could get to know each other a bit better.

There is a certain connotation to this sentence, not least considering Mrs. Staller’s past, but English is her 3^rd language, so all in all there was no need to read anything into it, more than she just wanted to know a bit more about me and the company I represent. So a lunch date was set, together with her assistant and friend, Mrs. Francesca Missori.

Hotel Bulgari, Rome

So, what premises to choose when inviting a celebrity? The great British comedian, the late Sean Lock, once said, being a house hold name is like suffering from dementia. Everyone knows you and your life while you haven’t got the first clue of who they are.

I needed to find a place where people would respect her boundaries. The choice fell on Hotel Bulgari. It is as luxuriously as it gets – their penthouse can be yours for € 13,000/night – but the restaurant prices, albeit not cheap, are manageable. I arrived well ahead of time and was lead to a table that was close to the waiters’ desk and therefore a bit more traffic was to be expected than I had hoped for.

I asked the front waiter for another table, but was informed that sadly everything else was reserved. It was time to test what the name Cicciolina, Mrs. Staller’s stage name, could do.

All I had to do, really, was to mention who my guest would be, and that I would appreciate it massively if there was any other table available to us. The waitress was only young, but that stopped her in her tracks. She called the Maître d’ who quickly assigned a new table. An Italian had told me beforehand that in Italy Cicciolina is a nonpareil. This was my first confirmation.

And There She Was

And there she was, flamboyant as always. Her and her assistant arrived at 5 minutes past 1 pm, which is on time in Italy and a sign, also told to me, that Mrs. Staller was not at all a prima donna. As it turned out, she was anything but.
She wanted me to use her first name, Ilona, and she wanted a glass of Pinot Gris. A bottle was ordered and served immediately by the main waiter who throughout our lunch would attend to any of our needs, coming across as being almost servile.

Although you should give your guests your full attention, I had enough time to once a while scan the restaurant and the nearby tables, seeing that the guests were discreetly curious to observe this icon of eros.

From the first salut to the end of our lunch the conversation flowed seamlessly.
Ilona would swap between speaking English and Italian. The assistant’s English was brilliant and she translated throughout. Even when Ilona spoke in more than a decent English, Francesca would take upon herself to repeat exactly the same phrases.

The dishes arrived. As a starter Ilona chose pomodoro e basilico and as soon as it was served she invited me to taste this typical Italian recipe. There just wasn’t anything formal over our rendez vous.

And there you sit in front of a person who, slowly but surely, know how to captivate. Via her charm, even signaling innocence, although there is plenty of evidence that she is anything but.

Having Fun at the Kingdom Hall

And Ilona is on top extremely funny!

Allow me to come with an example. Just across from Ilona’s home, in north of Rome, there is a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. One evening, recently, her and Francesca decided to give it a try. After about 2 hours of excruciatingly boring speeches over various biblical texts – something I can relate to – Ilona whispered to Francesca, why is Jehovah not helping us?

Christianity and Sexuality

I had noticed that, hidden in plain sight of Ilona’s cleavage, she was wearing a cross. I asked her about her Christianity. She is a committed catholic and it seems with a pretty strong faith. Francesca added that Ilona have visited almost all churches in Rome – there are 930. I dared asking if Ilona also had made her confessions? She laughed and gave me a high five. I took this as a yes.

Ilona was the porn star par excellence in the 1980’s. She stopped working in the industry in 1989. It was now a closed chapter to her, something she seemed to shrug off, almost nonchalantly. She had immigrated from communist Hungary – her father worked at the interior ministry in Budapest where he had arranged for her visa.

She then started as a model in Italy and soon her agent suggested she should work in x-ray films. She gave into temptation as it was extremely well paid. It was before the Internet and therefore with a much better business case.

In the name of research, I have seen a few of her movies. They are built on variations of the same theme, not particularly strong on plots, all of them with a happy ending.

We Need to Talk About Men

Ilona had ordered yet another bottle. It was time to discuss the subject of her speech at our event at Terrazzo Cafarelli, 1st of March 2025. Politics, perhaps? She was once a member of the Italian Parliament, and started her own party with more than 20,000 personal votes. Impossible to guess what gender most of them must have been.

No, she replied. Politics is depressing, as all politicians are backstabbing each other. Her marriage to the artist Jeff Coons? It had ended acrimoniously, so that was depressing as well. Finally, she came to the conclusion No, I want to talk about men.
Excellent choice. Men it is then.

A Well Executed Signature

She had brought along with her a gift. It was a large coffee table book, her memoire, with lots of photos leaving not much to the imagination. She wanted to sign it and asked where to in the book. She suggested I should choose a photo. I found a photo, again with no job for the imagination, but it was in black and white, and therefore more artistic. An excuse, I know.

She looked at the photo, pondered for a moment and started writing. It consisted of two lines, where the last few letters ended exactly at her most private parts. Then she laughed, while handing me the book.

I asked, so Ilona, do you understand men? She looked straight at me with a terribly seductive smile and said with a glint in her eye, kind of.
At that moment, the decades between now and then were pealed off. In front of me sat Cicciolina.

We said our farewells and I paid the bill with a generous tip. The waiters had all played their part. I left, rather tipsier than I had anticipated – and a little bit in love. She’s still got it.

Mrs. Ilona Staller will attend our Gala dinner at the Terrazzo Cafarelli on the 1^st of March 2025. You can read about the trip in full here. (there is a link to the English version as well).