Rome, Sept 14: Semi-clad young beauty queens have suffered an unprecedented defeat at the hands of fully-dressed grandmothers in the Italian television ratings battle, Italian media has reported. When beauty pageant "Miss Italia", a yearly fest of sexy girls in swimsuits, went head to head with "Velone", a dance and comedy contest for ladies over 65 on a rival channel, the grannies came out on top.
With both programmes on air on Thursday night, 4.94 million Italians tuned in to see the wisecracking older women, while 4.82 million were eyeing the voluptuous would-be starlets.
In previous years, "Miss Italia" had always got much higher ratings than competing programmes.

"So it's true that beauty isn't everything," commented a leading daily on Saturday.