Podcasts like Bunga Bunga

Bunga bunga is a phrase of uncertain origin and various meanings that dates from 1910, and a name for an area of Australia dating from 1852. By 2010 the phrase had gained popularity in Italy and the international press to refer to then-Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's sex parties with prostitutes, which caused a major political scandal in Italy.

An 1852 issue of Hogg's Instructor states that "bunga bunga" is the name given by locals to a location near Moreton Bay on the eastern coast of Australia, although this appears to be a mistaken reference to the Bunya-Bunya pine.

In 1910 Horace de Vere Cole, Virginia Woolf, her brother Adrian Stephen and a small group of friends pretended to be the Prince of Abyssinia and his entourage. They obtained permission to visit one of the world's most powerful warships, HMS Dreadnought, in Weymouth, Dorset, in what became known as the Dreadnought hoax. It was reported that each time the Commander showed them a marvel of the ship, they murmured the phrase bunga, bunga! which then became a popular catchphrase of the time. Adrian Stephen had this to say about the phrase: