Guè enjoys a cameo in the film La Grazia, about an elderly hip-hop-loving Italian president who presents the rapper with a knighthood.

Whenever I’ve been in Italy, on the occasions I’m unfortunate enough to hear the radio – in a taxi, for example, or in a shop or bar – I’ve been struck by how utterly shit the music is.

It seems to come in only two varieties: overwrought power ballads croaked out by a middle-aged man with the hoarse voice of a 60-a-day chainsmoker, and Italian-language old-skool rap by beanie-wearing white men with over-groomed beardlets who look as if their hip-hop role model is Ali G.

Guè is one of these rappers, and I came across him – and this tune – in Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, La Grazia, about a hip-hop-loving 70-year-old President of Italy who’s battling a personal and political crisis during his last days in power.

The rapper appears as himself in a line-up of the great and the good (and, in his case, the very tall), being presented with the equivalent of knighthoods by the president, played by Toni Servillo from The Great Beauty.

Impressively, and characteristically for Sorrentino who loves these incongruous moments (like the banging techno in the Vatican in The Young Pope, Paloma Faith’s dance video in Youth, and Michael Caine “conducting” a field of cows on a Swiss mountainside), the elderly president goes on to perform the song himself, rapping along with his headphones on.

It’s hard to imagine any of our lot, from Major to Starmer, not even Jam-loving Cameron or Clash fan Johnson, listening to rap, let alone performing it. But, as the post-Covid inquiry established, you never know what goes on behind the doors of Number 10.

For all we know, Teresa May could have been getting her freak on with Missy Truss while we were all being subjected to austerity measures. But I doubt they would have been playing any Euro-rap on their Brexit playlists.

Anyway, in contrast to the usual radio shite, I do like this tune, Le Bimbe Piangono (‘The Girls Are Crying’): as much for the music as the braggadocio-filled flow, accompanied by what you might call a typical rap video of the ’90s, full of sex and violence and conspicuous consumerism.

I’d like to think it’s satirical but Guè is an Italian man and my research (thanks AI) suggests that it’s not. There is, however, a self-awareness about his celebration of the rapper’s good life that echoes in the indecisive president’s dilemmas in the film.

“Chiedo dopo perdono, non prima per favore,” he raps – “I will ask for forgiveness later, not before then please” – which I suppose is another way of saying “carpe diem,” filtered through Roman Catholicism.