This July Madonna is coming to Milan to do the same concert she did in Rome last year. Oh good.

Italians have a strange relationship with Madonna. Criticise whatever you like – politics, education, Facebook – and you can get away with it. Criticise Madonna and they choke on their capuccinos. Madonna’s cool.

There are several reasons why she’s so cool.

First, she respects her fans. That’s why Romans spent 150 Euros and three rain-sploshed days to see the back of her neck from several miles away. In playback. With no encore.

Second, she’s a feminist icon. That’s why she spent the eighties pandering to male fantasies with videos that make the Pussycat Dolls look like Tracy Chapman, and bagged a billion bucks in the process.

Third, she dabbles in religion. She knows about all that freaky oriental stuff. She does yoga and meditation, when she isn’t putting her make-up on. That’s cool too.

Best of all, she cares. She adopts underprivileged kids, and remember: the more underprivileged the kid, the greater the street cred for Mummy (ask Angelina Jolie). Maybe she even finds a spare second for them when she isn’t jet-setting around the world telling everyone how wonderful she is. Of course, on her income she could probably cancel Third World debt in the blink of a perfectly-curled eyelash, but then she’d have nothing to talk about on CNN.

Finally – with classic Italian logic – she looks great. Which is all that matters: ‘Sempre una bella donna…’ Mind you, I never really understood the good-looking/good-personality equation. Who fancied Mother Theresa?

Incidentally, I’ve just read that Madonna once asked Fellini to direct a video and he said no. Now that is cool.