Silvio Berlusconi admitted yesterday that his marriage to the actress Veronica Lario was doomed as he set the stage for a divorce battle over his €4.5 billion (£4 billion) fortune.

Fuming at his wife’s public insinuations of infidelity, the Italian Prime Minister used a series of interviews to hit back and demand an apology.

“Madam says I’m cavorting with 17-year-old girls. It’s an assertion I cannot allow,” Mr Berlusconi told the newspaper Corriere della Sera. “It’s the third time she’s done this to me in the middle of the election campaign. It really is too much.”

Asked by the newspaper if his 19-year marriage could be saved, he said: “I don’t think so, and I don’t know if I want to save it this time.”

Mr Berlusconi said that the row sparked by his wife was a “media crime”, part of a plot to “create difficulties” for him at a time when his popularity had never been higher.

He denied his wife’s accusation that he had put forward showgirls as candidates for the European Parliament on behalf of his party, the People of Liberty, and said that Ms Lario had been led to believe otherwise by maliciously inaccurate reporting.

He did not explain why he and other ministers had addressed a gathering at his party’s headquarters of prospective Euro MPs who included at least 20 young women whose only claim to fame was that they had appeared on Big Brother and television soap operas or variety shows, or why Il Giornale, his own newspaper, had featured eight of the showgirls in a two-page spread.

Mr Berlusconi said that reports of his surprise attendance at the 18th birthday of Noemi Letizia, a Naples woman who calls him “Daddy”, had also been “inexact”. Her father had been a friend for many years and had invited him to the party after learning that he was in Naples.

Asked why Ms Letizia called him Daddy (Papi), he said that it was “a joke”. She had wanted to call him “grandpa” (nonno) but “Daddy is better, don’t you think?”. In an interview with La Stampa, Mr Berlusconi, 72, said: “I am worried and upset. We have maintained a difficult situation together for the love of our children but now it’s over.”

Mr Berlusconi’s approval rating is at about 56 per cent, boosted by his handling of the aftermath of the earthquake in Abruzzo. However, in the run-up to the European elections even the media he controls will be full of stories on his divorce and attractive women friends — and the family battle over his fortune.

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