A married Roman Catholic politician whose party has espoused family values and is pressing for all Italian MPs to take drug tests was exposed yesterday after a prostitute took an overdose of cocaine in his hotel room.

Cosimo Mele, 50, a parliamentary deputy for Italy’s Christian Democratic UDC party, resigned from the party after colleagues complained that his behaviour was incompatible with the Centre Right’s espousal of family values. The timing of the dismissal was particularly sensitive as the party has been at the forefront of a campaign to oblige all parliamentarians to take a voluntary drugs test. This is due to take place tomorrow.

Mr Mele, whose wife is about to give birth to their fourth child, said that he felt proud to have risked exposure by calling the emergency services when the girl began hyperventilating and experiencing delirium and hallucinations. “At least I avoided the worst – for her,” he said. Mr Mele, who comes from Brindisi, in staunchly Catholic southern Italy, claimed he had not realised that the girl was a prostitute.

During a recess in an evening vote in the lower house, he had gone for dinner with friends at a fashionable restaurant near the French Embassy on Piazza Farnese, and had struck up a “sympathetic rapport” with a woman in her late twenties to whom he was introduced.

The MP said he had been flattered by her interest. “I am not exactly the kind of man women seek out with a lantern,” he told Il Messaggero, the Rome daily. He said that “one thing led to another” and they ended up in bed in a suite at the Hotel Flora on Via Veneto, which features in Fellini’s 1960 classic film La Dolce Vita. .

Asked if he had paid the girl for sex, Mr Mele replied: “Not exactly. I spontaneously gave her a present.” Pressed further, he admitted that the present had been a sum in cash, “though not excessive”. He denied reports that he had taken part in a threesome, saying that although there had been another woman present she had only chatted to the first woman in the suite’s sitting room while he lay in bed watching television. “I think I fell asleep while they were talking,” he said. “Perhaps that was when they took drugs.”

Mr Mele said that the prostitute had been taken ill towards dawn. “I phoned the reception and then called for medical assistance.

“She didn’t want me to, but I felt it was the right thing to do.” He admitted that he had supported a Bill going through parliament calling for tougher measures against drugs offences, but denied that he had taken drugs himself.

“I made a mistake, and I assume full responsibility,” he said. “I am living a nightmare. I want to wake up and find it has all been a bad dream.” He said that he would tell his wife everything today at their home at Ostuni, and ask for her forgiveness, though he said that he lacked the courage to tell his children.

Although he had agreed to leave the UDC, he refused to resign as a deputy, because he was “a respectable man” with virtues and weaknesses. “There is a great deal of hypocrisy in Italian politics, with politicians of Left and Right making out they are saints,” Mr Mele said.

He told La Stampa: “How many parliamentarians go to bed with girls? Is it a crime? You think UDC deputies don’t make love? Of course I respect Christian values, but what has that to do with going with a prostitute? It’s a personal matter.

“Just because this happened after five or six days away from home doesn’t mean I can’t be a good father and husband . . . I don’t think my electors care a fig who I go to bed with. They expect me to resolve the problems of the area I represent.”

Some fellow deputies offered support. Franco Grillini, of the Democrats of the Left, said that Mr Mele’s name should have been withheld because he had committed no crime.

However, Senator Mariella Burani Procaccini, of Forza Italia, said: “Deputies have no right to privacy, and are answerable to those who elect and pay them.”

Colleagues said that Mr Mele, who is also a construction entrepreneur, was noted for his energy and drive. He had, however, been investigated for – although not convicted of – alleged corruption while deputy mayor of Carovigno in the 1990s and was known for indulging his passion for roulette at the casinos of Monte Carlo and Venice.

Corriere della Sera said that although Via Veneto remained a street of luxury hotels, sordid episodes of drugs and sex were a far cry from the days of La Dolce Vita in the 1950s and 1960s. Last week a nightclub was closed by police after a customer claimed that it was charging €2,000 (£1,400) for a girl’s “company”, and selling champagne bottles that were fraudulently filled with Frascati wine at astronomical prices.

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