Many of the demonstrators yesterday were in their 30s and 40, wearing baseball caps and jeans rather than berets and blue overalls. The standard image of the smaller Languedoc wine grower is that of an agricultural dinosaur, unwilling to accept that the traditional bulk market for rot-gut red wine (“gros rouge”) is dead. In fact, many of the remaining Languedoc growers are younger men who have invested all their reserves of cash in efforts to adapt to the changing market. With a general election in May 2006 at the latest, the UDC, a rump of the once-dominant Christian Democratic party, was keen to put some clear, blue water between itself and a prime minister many in Italy believe to be doomed. But as the UDC has promised to continue to support Mr Berlusconi’s government from outside, President Ciampi was expected to ask the media billionaire to form a new government.But exactly when was not clear: the President might feel it his duty to have talks with all political forces before calling on Mr Berlusconi to resume.Mr Berlusconi had been expected to resign three days ago.

They are demanding a one-year moratorium on property taxes and social charges and more aid, concentrated specifically in the south. Just when we should be reaping the benefits of the sacrifices we have made, our prices have collapsed.” The French government this week doubled its offer of emergency aid to wine producers to ¤140m but the southern growers say that, spread thinly throughout France, this will buy no more than “two tractor tyres” for each grower. The southern producers have made big efforts in recent years to grub up vines, reduce production and improve quality and marketing. There have been a series of minor terrorist attacks by extremist wine producers in the French south in recent weeks, including dynamite attacks on three government offices and the hijacking and destruction of lorry-loads of wine.

The wine producers of Languedoc and Roussillon on the southern coastal plain, always the most volatile in France, are especially furious because they say that the crisis of overproduction is not of their making. The French low- and medium-quality wine industry has been stricken by the collapse of wholesale prices and a glut on the European and world markets. Finally, the rain came down and both sides dispersed.The riot was always more theatrical than violent but demonstrates the growing anger of French wine-growers, especially in the south. At one point a launch crewed by Dutch tourists found itself trapped between the two bridges, on which wheely bins had been set aflame The CRS bombarded the rioters with tear gas The Dutch tourists turned their launch and escaped. Joined by a sprinkling of local anarchists, the young wine-growers taunted and confronted the CRS riot police for nearly two hours across two bridges over a canal in the heart of the town. A group of 50 young wine producers hurled molotov cocktails, cobble stones, bottles and flares at riot police at the end of a turbulent but mostly peaceful demonstration by 10,000 growers from the French deep south. The grapes of wrath fermenting in the French wine industry boiled over into a mini-riot on the streets of Narbonne yesterday.

Mr Berlusconi told the the Senate yesterday hours before meeting the President: “With your confidence and support we have written important pages in our country’s history; with your confidence and your support I am sure we will write many more.”The resignation kills Mr Berlusconi’s dream of being the first Italian prime minister to lead a single government for a full five-year term.. The man Italians call Il Cavaliere (the Cavalier) had run out of options. On Monday, he received a written promise from the UDC that it would loyally support him. The document was given on the assumption that Mr Berlusconi would then formally throw in the towel. Instead he tried to brazen his way through the crisis.But another coalition partner, the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale, said it would precipitate the government’s fall if Mr Berlusconi did not do the decent thing. Italy’s longest-running government since the Second World War ended with a whimper yesterday evening when Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi handed his resignation to President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the head of state.
It was a formal act which was required of him by the Italian constitution after a minor member of his coalition, the centrist and Catholic UDC party, pulled out of the government last week.That was prompted by regional elections this month in which Mr Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party was badly beaten. Saatchi bought it for £50,000 in 1991.* Rachel Whiteread’s Ghost, a sculpture from 1990, was a plaster cast of a living room modelled on a house in north London similar to the one she grew up in.