Italy's former prime minister and cruise-ship crooner Silvio Berlusconi released an album of love songs on his last day in office on Wednesday.

The self-declared Latin lover, who often boasted he single-handedly kept large groups entertained for hours on end with his charm and silky voice, wrote the lyrics for the album entitled True Love.

His singer friend Mariano Apicella performs the sensual Neapolitan songs, which tell of tormented love, featuring lyrics such as "another day of wind and rain, another night without you," or "Stay, and leave me your heart".

Berlusconi, now 75, has written other albums with Apicella, though this is the first that includes samba tracks.

"I run my hands down your side, because it's you. I adore you and I already miss you," says another lyric.

Berlusconi, who still performs for friends at intimate dinner parties, also could not resist having the last word at a ceremony to mark the handover of power to Italy's new premier, Mario Monti.

As he handed Mr Monti a bell rung at cabinet meetings, Berlusconi flashed his trademark smile and quipped: "I used to ring it when I was an altar boy."

The scandal-plagued ex-premier, who is on trial for buying sex from a 17-year-old girl at one of his dinner parties, has spent his last days in power packing up gifts - a sword from Kazakhstan and a vase from China.

A report in La Repubblica daily said the larger-than-life billionaire, who has been in power for 10 of the past 17 years, had chosen the two objects as having particular sentimental value out of hundreds of gifts received.

When receiving the vase he shocked diplomats by pretending to drop it and then quipped: "I like the flowers on it, but next time bring one with pictures of the kama sutra" - Indian erotic art that has nothing to do with China.

The report said he was also packing away three framed photos of himself with former US president George W. Bush, Pope Benedict XVI and the late pope John Paul II, as well as returning priceless artwork borrowed from museums.

Berlusconi submitted his resignation on Saturday as the nation grappled with a major debt crisis, to scenes of jubilation among thousands of people in the streets of Rome.

(Read by Emily Cheng. Emily Cheng is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)