“I will work for a little longer, I will devote myself to my children”

“I’ve never been afraid to do what I wanted on television – continues Paolo Bonolis – You don’t have to think about what people want to see, you have to start from what you want to tell. It is certainly something new, because we are all unique : if we walk on the paths of others, we become automatons. Each of us is an unrepeatable piece, we must have the courage to tell who we are, even on TV. I did it: sometimes we liked it, sometimes we liked it more , seldom liked it less”.

Bonolis and his 44-year career Paolo Bonolis retraces his 44-year career with the usual irony: “I started off making TV for children, then for teenagers, then for adults: I miss ‘Frontiers of the spirit’ and I closed the loop perfectly… It’s a work to which I have dedicated myself for 44 years: I feel that in the last remnant of my life I want to concentrate on something else. I will be on video for a little longer”.

Bonolis’ masters of TV Paolo Bonolis considers his teachers Corrado and Vianello: “I heard Corrida on the radio when I went to Ostia with mum and dad. I met Vianello the first time one evening at the Telegatti. I had gone to the bathroom, I peed at the urinal when he came near me him, to do the same thing. He looked at me and said: ‘Oooh, Bonolis, what a pleasure… but now it won’t be the time to shake hands’…”. Then he tells an anecdote with Mike Bongiorno: “Dad unloaded butter at the general market. I had recently started doing TV and as a young face I had to host an evening alongside a veteran like Mike Bongiorno, who called at home one evening. Dad answered “Who is it?”. “I’m Mike Bongiorno, is Paolo here?”

The Sanremo of Bonolis Bonolis recalls his Sanremo in 2005: “I loved changing it. I wanted great guests: Mike Tyson, Will Smith and even Hugh Grant came, a deadly break. They said no to everything. On stage I enjoyed perculating him. I asked him how English never had the propensity to make the cat get on the table – the cat is on the table – when we in Italy tend to kick it and make it get off”.

Bonolis and politics Paolo Bonolis recalls his first meeting with Silvio Berlusconi: “I was summoned to Palazzo Grazioli by the president. I said to myself: what do they want from me? Letta was also at the table, eating only an apple. At one point Berlusconi told me : ‘Bonolis, I had an important idea for you: you will be the spokesperson for Forza Italia’. I replied: ‘President, it’s not out of malice, but I didn’t even vote for you’… you tried. Paon”. Paolo was also asked to be mayor of Rome: “My answer was: ‘but what have you been drinking’. No, for heaven’s sake. I’m not interested in politics”.

Il “no” a Freddie Mercury “I was 23, 24 years old and at one point his majesty Freddie Mercury came into the restaurant where I was having dinner. He sat next to me and started talking… only that after a while I realized he didn’t just want to talk. Al not mine, when I explained to him that I adored him but that on a hormonal level we were a bit distant, he laughed He still asked me for my address and a year and a half later he sent me home two tickets for the concert by Wembley. I went”.