You are interpolating again, this time about the personal in order not to backtrack from dismissing the Renaissance and the Classics.

For the umpteenth and last time, it is not about the messenger but the message.

Downplaying the tale (read my lips: about Barabbas) by sidetracking on the teller (Benigni) and his style, language and what have you, points in the wrong direction here, which is – lest we forget – Brexit.

Maltese people think he has international impact and a universally-familiar communication style because they are over-exposed to Italian culture and Italian television, overestimate its impact, and think that everybody appreciates it. That is not so.

There is no need to get personally upset on Benigni’s behalf.

Yes, his communication style is very, very Italian and not appreciated outside Italian culture, which includes parts of Malta. And speakers elsewhere in the world do not make references to Pilate and Barabbas because they are aware that their audiences are international and Pilate and Barabbas will have little or no significance to them.

Again, this is a fact and there is no need to take it personally.

The Italian style of communication – whether in speaking or in writing – uses a plethora of totally unnecessary words to build beautiful-sounding but ultimately meaningless paragraphs.

This is completely alien to British and American writing and speaking, which is succinct (and here I am not talking about idiots like Trump or Boris Johnson). Every word has to serve its purpose.

Benigni is irritating to me because his passion is the wrong kind of passion to somebody from my kind of culture. It is not passion for the subject, but passion for its own sake, to ‘seem passionate’. That is the Italian style – florid – and it irritates and grates to those who prefer a more circumspect approach.

And nobody in the secular world references the Bible anymore. When you talk about Pilate and Barabbas you are working on the assumption that everybody in your audience was raised a Catholic, or at least the sort of Christian who went to Sunday school and took Bible lessons.

Rational people, like me, are completely turned off by that way of speaking. Our minds shut down against it.

You are very wrong about all people being enamoured of him. Most people outside Italy haven’t even heard of him, except in a few narrow circles.

As for Boris Johnson’s popularity – you need a reality check on that.

Why are we even talking about this? The fact that Benigni had to use a reference from the New Testament because he couldn’t explain his point to his audience in any other way is enough. Who does that in the post-Enlightenment world?

I see it quite differently. Pilate, a crafty and clever ruler, wanted to choose Jesus (dan m’ghandux htija), but knowing that this very dangerous as it was against the will of the pharisees, and also knowing very well that by giving the choice in the hands of the public (heavily influenced by the pharisees already) they would have chosen Barabbas, this is what he did.

Pilate gambled to save his ass, in the same way Cameron did to save his. The simple crowd simply followed the instructions of the pharisees for they knew no better. Such an important decision had to be taken by the ruler, for that is why he is the ruler.

I will ask to think on one issue – how come politicians always take decisions to raise taxes and introduce new ones and do it so easily…they never give us the choice of a referendum on that.