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Charles Kennedy's reference to 'baloney' is one of many associations ensuring the city's disproportionate influence
Challenged by Andrew Neil last week to say whether he was about to head to the House of Lords, Charles Kennedy dismissed the rumour. It was, he said, "a load of baloney". Which may, or perhaps may not, be that. But it is certainly a tribute to baloney and, by extension, to the Italian city of Bologna, of which the word baloney is a corruption, that Mr Kennedy found the expression so readily to hand in making his denial. Baloney reached Britain by way of America, where it is a form of sausage similar to the mortadella which originally came from Bologna itself. But it is one of several associations that have ensured Bologna a uniquely disproportionate influence in western language and culture. Bologna is a splendid city, not as much visited as it should be by the many who rush past it each year, en route to Tuscany and the Adriatic coast. Yet Bologna casts a soft power spell nevertheless. In postwar Italy, Bologna was synonymous with an outstanding era of leftwing local government, now alas largely a memory, which brought municipal socialists from around Europe to see how the Bolognese did it. It is hard to think of a city more famous for its cooking than Bologna, though ironic that the dish for which it is most celebrated abroad, the bolognese sauce, is not known by that name in the city itself: there, as elsewhere, Italians know it as ragu. In Italian brothels, la bolognesa was an oral specialist too, though of a different kind. But it is food that has ensured Bologna's reputation will never be a load of baloney.
