Silvio Berlusconi’s domestic troubles have caused a serious headache for planners of next week’s G8 summit.

Normally the wife of the Prime Minister would be the host for a series of events for the spouses of the leaders — but Mr Berlusconi’s better half has filed for divorce and so Clio Napolitano, the wife of the Italian President, Giorgio Napolitano, has been asked to step into the breach.

She will take Michelle Obama and Sarah Brown and the others on tours of the earthquake region around L’Aquila, host meals for them, and perform other duties expected of the hostess. "The wife was not available, the other women in his life appear to be less than suitable, the president's wife has stepped up to the plate," a summit insider said. "Protocol will be observed."

The scandals involving Mr Berlusconi have caused “complications” and “lowered expectations”, according to another summit source. A petition launched by Italian female academics appealing to the First Ladies not to attend the summit because of Mr Berlusconi’s “offensive” behaviour towards women has garnered more than 12,000 signatures, including those of the astrophysicist Margherita Hack and the writer Dacia Maraini.

Even the former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, once on close terms with Mr Berlusconi, are distancing themselves from him, with Mrs Blair recently revealing on Italian television that her husband had made her stand between himself and the Italian leader when they visited his Sardinian villa in 2004 because Mr Berlusconi was wearing an "embarassing bandanna" to hide a hair transplant.

Mr Berlusconi has tried to rescue the situation by announcing “unconfirmed” plans for the First Ladies to be received en masse by the Pope. However, the Vatican has confirmed only a papal audience for President Obama and his family next Friday, the third and final day of the summit. Sarah Brown will visit the headquarters in Rome of the World Food Programme — while if any of the leaders bring their children, there is a safari planned for them to see the bears in the Abruzzo national park.

Mrs Napolitano, at least, is likely to prove a stimulating hostess. A former labour lawyer from a left-wing family who married Mr Napolitano in 1959, she is noted for her strong social conscience and down-to-earth sense of humour. She once overheard a teenage girl exclaim, on seeing her husband: “It’s the President, I feel faint!” She observed, drily: “Calm down my dear, he’s hardly Brad Pitt.”

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