Enrico Papi: “No one laughed at my comedy shows. I have been married for 26 years but I feel fluid. “Mrs. Ciampi said I was a fool.”

Wikipedia writes that his mother was a “landowner.” Such medieval expressions have not been heard since the time of the Caesars.
“In fact, it is exaggerated. Don’t imagine anything… My mother was the daughter of a family of agricultural entrepreneurs. I have beautiful pictures of her in her eighties, still riding a tractor. However, there is also something else wrong with my online resume: date of birth. “I'm from 1985, not 1965.”
Enrico Papi He couldn't help but joke. He exaggerates, exaggerates, and surfs the top. Same as what's on TV. He has lived at least three lives – a failed cabaret artist, a telepaparazzi king, and a TV presenter – he has met hundreds of people, and he has thousands of tales that are partly true and partly fictional so as not to disappoint the viewer. Always looking for an audience.

The bourgeois family, the inevitable expectations of the parents: what did they expect of it?
“My father didn't want me to do this job, he dreamed of something safer. My mother, on the other hand, was more modern, and was my biggest fan. To prove to my parents that I could do it, I started opening concerts in arenas. I was traveling in a large Mercedes car that consumed millions of liters per kilometre. I fooled around to entertain the audience, made up monologues that were funny to me, but people didn't laugh very much.”

When did you realize that he was the comedian who didn't make you laugh?
“One day I overheard the words of the manager who hired me: This papi is not funny at all, but when he is around it never rains, it is good luck. “I was very disappointed.”

Another disappointment he caused his father was that he could not even graduate from Cebu.
“What an experience…they took me as a witness after Del Piero. I had an established television career and was already out of the way. However, in order to be the guy who films them, I had to take at least three tests a year. I thought it was a walk in the park. I showed up for the first exam with a full hall, and signed autographs. The first question. zero. second question. nothing. So I asked: But isn’t there a question please? Meanwhile, there was a dead silence in the room. From there I realized it was serious and I had to look into it. I finished all three exams out of respect for the agreement, but then I gave up. “It was a lot of money, but I swear I don't remember how much.”

More missteps?
“I've always been very self-confident, and perhaps I've overestimated myself… Do you think that when I was a boy – I was really crazy at that time – I loved acting, and as soon as I saved some money I rented a 100-seat theater in Rome performing monologues by great authors like Pirandello.”

Sorry if I laughed.
“You have the right to laugh. No one came to see me, only relatives and friends, and every now and then ten or fifteen people.

It was discovered by Magali.
“Actually, I was the one who broke into his room. He had an office with a window on the ground floor. I knew he was getting ready Great appearance And he was looking for someone to do candid camming. “I walked in directly from the street, through the window, to propose myself.”

Let's pretend we believe it.
“I swear! Giancarlo was exceptional, and he was impressed by my ingenuity. One day this crazy man had an amazing idea: he had us dress up in Nazi uniforms to ask for the military discount at the cinema. They called the police.”

Then came the gossip.
“I proposed a program to Rai. As soon as I said the words of the gossip video, I was fired. As soon as I entered through the window, they forced me out the door… until one day Carlo Rossella, the director of Tg1, gave me a gossip show opportunity. Chatter, is broadcast after the nightly Tg1. It worked and I was lucky because Berlusconi did not sleep much: he saw me at night and called me to receive me at Mediaset. I thought it was a joke, and I too was the victim of a candid camera. I was almost unknown and he took me instead of Al-Saghrabi, who was running for political office. In 1996 Popes Daily “It was the turning point in my career.”

Among the “shovels” is the fight with Grillo: he wanted 150 million liras.
“He was on the beach in Porto Cervo, the cameras showed up and filmed him swimming with his wife. He approaches, gets out of the water, smiles, takes the camera and then a piece of paper on which he writes that I had to give him 150 million for publishing the pictures. I fell, I didn't care. I broadcast service I request a public group. “It is clear that there was no donation and no complaint from Grillo.”

Bonolis threw a pie at her.
“You know I don't remember that.”

He was chasing him for Laura Freddie and Andrea Roncato had the same reaction.
“Yes, he was all right: I persecuted him a lot, he gave us a lot of work.”

Everyone hates her,” Mike Bongiorno said.
“What a pain… I was hiding in a hotel during the Sanremo festival hoping to see him with some woman. But nothing. I wrote a funny report, and as his press office entered his room, he became very upset. Looking back, maybe I exaggerated.”

Worse still, Mike or Ciampi's wife who publicly called her an “idiot”?
“I was naive. I was in Sanremo hosted by Raffaella Cara. “You asked me to do a disrespectful DopoFestival, and the risk of making mistakes was high.”

He mocked the Italian consulate general in Buenos Aires because of her accent. An international issue.
“It was a combination of naivety and generosity. “There I realized that Sanremo is incredibly interesting. Even a sneeze becomes a nuclear explosion.”

What relationship did you have with Raffaella Cara?
“A special person, interested in details. One day he asked me if I knew how to play the triset.
– Of course, I'm very good, I answered. But that wasn't true.
-Do you want to come and play a game at my house?
-I'm afraid I'm too strong for you.
In five days I learned all the rules. I don't even know how I managed to get to the final table with Rafaela. He also asked me to come back, but I said I had never lost and for me the defeat was very difficult to swallow.”

Did the success of “Sarabanda” make you think?
“In fact, it was crazy to accept. You were the king of telepaparazzi and suddenly you were a competition host. At first it didn't work, we had area code classifications. Give me another week. I was desperate. We made some small changes and started to grow exponentially. “I sweated a lot, so I didn't grow much.”

Side effects?
“This program changed my life. I worked all day and lost my awareness of real life. It was like I was in Big Brother, I couldn't tell the difference between reality and TV, I saw Cat Man during lunch even though he wasn't there, and I was having hallucinations. I would wake up and think there were cameras. “I was living a distorted reality.”

Costanzo was his best man at his wedding.
“When we met, he was cautious, so I imposed on him Happy Sunday At first we addressed each other with an official note. And then a very strong personal relationship was born, despite the differences: One day he told me that we had a meeting at seven o'clock. I thought it would be in the evening, but it was in the morning.

Did you quarrel with Ilary Blasi in “Isola”?
“But no, definitely. “They talk about it on social media, but I don’t believe much in social media.”

Pier Silvio Berlusconi gave her three programs (she is now on air on Italia 1 with “La Pupa e il nerd” every Wednesday). Only Maria De Filippi dares.
“Thanks! It's out of reach. Then I'm at Italia 1. I'm grateful to Pier Silvio Berlusconi for his recognition, I'm at Mediaset's service, I don't suffer from video bulimia, I don't have to be there.”

He constantly posts shirtless photos on Instagram. How much do you like it?
“I was born as a joke, but I saw that I was getting a lot of likes… It's a ridiculous way of self-hack, and I know what I'm doing is ridiculous. But I enjoy it.”

Instagram is self-reference, a self-portrait of the ego: self-mockery goes undetected…
“I promise: I'll try to stop, and I'll go to rehab! I limit posts to just one photo per week.”

He said it was “fluid”.
“I don't think I've made a great discovery. I've always thought that this distinction between the macho man who should never ask and the weak woman who should be saved was meaningless. “I can fall in love with a man or a woman in the same way, without going through any kind of foreclosure.”

Did he fall in love with a man?
“Actually no, but it could happen and I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

Is it true that you have a love story with Valeria Marini?
Long silence. He smiles. “I love Valeria very much, but I have a memory of a goldfish.”

But excuse me, aren't you the one who brags that you've never used a teleprompter because you have a good memory? (Silence follows.) Let's go further. He has been married to Raffaella Schifino for 26 years, but you never end up in the gossip tabloids.
«We support ourselves: each of us has more faults than qualities, and to be together we must be able to value faults above all else. “Our union doesn’t make the news, even though it really should: two people who have been together for 25 years are like an aberration.”