Six degrees

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (below), who ruled Libya for four decades before being overthrown by the 'Arab spring' uprising, has discovered how fickle friends can be. But at least he still has family on his side. The devoted father once attempted to make his son al-Saadi Gaddafi the country's star footballer, mainly by rigging matches and not allow- ing other players to be identified by name. While there were doubts about his ability, Saadi did get to play in Italy, making one appearance for Perugia before failing a drug test. Before that, he had sat on the board of Juventus...

The grand old lady of Italian football, Juventus' black and white shirts were inspired by those of English team Notts County. But the shirt has proved luckier for Juventus. The Bianconeri have won a record 27 Italian league titles, many during the ownership of the Agnelli family. The Agnellis made their fortune in the car business and remain the owners of that other giant of Turin, carmaker Fiat...

An acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, Fiat has been Italy's mass-market car manufacturer for decades. It also dabbled in military aircraft production during the second world war. Once regarded as a bastion of communism, for its union strength, the company was compelled to make cars for Italy's wartime leader, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini...

Il Duce drove to his death in a Fiat Berlinetta. At the end of the war, in 1945, the dictator was attempting to flee to Switzerland in his black coupe. He was spotted and shot at, and his bullet-ridden body was put on public display in Milan. Mussolini's politics had been influenced by Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian revolutionary fighter after whom was named a quintessentially British biscuit, the Garibaldi...

The sugar-topped biscuit has been dunked in British tea for 150 years. It got its name after the Italian fighter made a trip to Tynemouth, England, in 1854. Few countries eat more biscuits per capita than Britain and the Garibaldi is almost a legend among aficionados, including one of the country's best-loved fictional television heroes of the past decade, Life on Mars rogue detective-with-a-heart, Gene Hunt ...

In the follow-up series, Ashes to Ashes, Hunt is shown working for the Metropolitan Police in London during the 1980s. In the real-life Met in 1984, police officer Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead in the street during a protest outside the Libyan embassy in St James's Square, by someone inside the building. The incident sparked a siege and diplomatic falling out with Libya, which eventually accepted responsibility in 1999 through its leader, Muammar Gaddafi.