Rome ? Roberto Benigni delivered four minutes of slapstick comedy antics during a live appearance on state television to promote his latest comic film, set against the backdrop of the Iraq war.

Sitting down Saturday night next to the TV anchorman, Benigni took off a red sweater and draped it on the embarrassed-looking man’s shoulders. He then ranted in favor of poetry and against war, which he said “makes no sense and is vulgar,” while remaining topless.

He even delivered some false news for shock value, joking that Premier Silvio Berlusconi had resigned.

Benigni is promoting “La Tigre e la Neve (The Tiger and the Snow),” a comedy set in today’s Iraq that stars the 52-year-old actor-director and his real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi.

He and Braschi also starred in “Life Is Beautiful,” about a father’s attempt to shield his young son from evil in a Nazi death camp. That film won the Oscar for best foreign film and Benigni won a best-actor Oscar.

“With his ability as an extraordinary improviser, he took over four minutes of the TV news, giving himself a gift of a long, maxi-commercial” for the movie, the Turin daily La Stampa said Sunday.