Another shot for the album

Date: 19/06/1997

There is no stopping Emma Bonino.

The Consumer Affairs Commissioner, for whose colourful antics the often colourless institution she represents should be grateful, recently squatted for a few hours in the offices of Italy's national broadcaster RAI.

Bonino's protest was against the company's alleged failure to comply with the law and give adequate coverage to last weekend's series of referenda on a wide range of issues from hunting to constitutional reform.

The plucky lady, who is most famous for being air-lifted on to the deck of a trawler in mid-Atlantic a couple of summers ago, and who is now halfway through a campaign to force-feed sardines, left nothing to chance: cameras were on hand to record her sit-in for posterity.