All it took was 12 indignant lines from a Times columnist and Britain's relationship with another European country was on the rocks.

“Are Italians the rudest people on the planet?” asked Matthew Parris in Thursday's edition before laying into the stylishly dressed people who had barged past him to get on to the Tube before he had the chance to alight. “And every time they've been yabbering in Italian,” Parris wrote.

After a barbed comment on modern Italian society, he then let fly at Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister. “Say what you like about our rowdy, beer-swilling English mob but they'd have seen through Berlusconi in an instant.”

Times sources in Rome predicted trouble, and they were right. “God save us from the English,” screamed the headline in the Milan daily Il Giornale — owned by the Berlusconi family — devoting a whole page to declare a “Newspaper War”.

The first target was Parris himself. “Heaven forbid! This ridiculous incident unleashed apocalyptic invective, another lecture of moralistic Puritanism that was not a little bit racist.”

Many Italians homed in on the swipe at Mr Berlusconi. A blogger on the Arte e Salute (Art and Health) site said: “Parris, Parris! Tell us what it is that is really bothering you ... not the materialism, the trash TV, the obsession with designer clothing and celebrity worship — in which I think the English are even worse than us — but for our political choices.”

Then the nation as a whole came under attack, in particular that same rowdy mob on display in Italy in summer.

The paper had a dig at the exorbitant fees charged to visitors to London attractions, “while we believe that it is the right of tourists to come with their huge buses into the Coliseum, bring them on to the Piazza of the Duomo, allow their four-wheel drives up to the Tower of Pisa,” all the while “leaving mountains of garbage on the stairways of our monuments that we would never dream of dropping in a foreign country, if only for fear of the bobbies”.

Il Giornale also harrumphed at English manners, kissing abilities and standards of hygiene, pointing out that “they have not yet learnt to use a bidet”.

Naturally, English food did not escape. Writing for La Stampa, Carlo Rossella, a long-time journalist in Berlusconi's media empire, decried the treatment of Italy in the British press and claimed that the Italians were far more polite.

“Whoever has spoken ill of unappetising porridge, or the nausea provoked by steak and kidney pie, raise your hand,” he said.

Then it got physical. Mr Rossella's piece was accompanied by less than flattering photographs of rather robust women performing a version of the can-can at Ascot, and bare-chested, tattooed British football fans on the loose in Italy.

“In the opinion of the Times editorialist, hooligans and violent asses are much better than we are. And all because Italians chose Berlusconi. Better Berlusconi than Gordon Brown, sad and boring.

“No one has ever tried to turn the tables and look at the English and England with the same critical eye — full of stereotypes, as does Mr Parris and his colleagues.”

Er, not quite true. When David Barnish, 47, won £750 compensation in May for an unhappy holiday in Greece — spoilt, he argued, by the overwhelming presence of Germans and the German language — it sparked a war of words between The Sun and Bild, Germany's mass circulation paper.

The British led the way with “Holiday from Helmut”, dusting off clichés about the Germans and their sun-lounger-poaching antics.

Bild didn't take this lying down, publishing an “avoid-at-all-costs” list of resorts traditionally dominated by the British, with some choice comments on this country's diet, drinking habits and penalty-taking ability.

Again our national anatomical flaws were highlighted, leading one to think that those funny Europeans might be on to something.

Only a few took it on the chin. Francesco, a blogger, wrote: “It's true, we've lost the elegance of our ways, and all that's left is the elegance of our dress.”

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