Bruno Vespa, he will be eighty years old on Monday. Some may be wondering: when will you retire? “Journalism is done with the head, which still works well. My editor of reference will decide whether to withdraw: Il Padreterno”. Thus begins the interview, given to Corriere della Sera, in which the journalist retraces passages of his professional and private life, starting from “Macchè” grudges, revenge “I have never helped one person to the detriment of another” and regrets “You can’t call it regret because it went very well for me. But I’m convinced that, if I had been on the left, my career would have been easier. For example, they wouldn’t have downsized or tried to close Porta a Porta.”
If he’s not left-wing, then is he right-wing? asks Tommaso Labate who signs the interview: “I am a moderate – replies Vespa -. And if you ask me what is meant by moderate I reply that for decades my son Alessandro has asked me every time who I voted for. Not ever discovered.” They say that you are Giorgia Meloni’s hidden consultant for communications, asks the journalist. “It’s ridiculous to even think about it. In the First Republic, unlike many other colleagues, I never participated in political meetings and never met a single political exponent in private. Except once, Giulio Andreotti. They wanted to impose on Tg1 the appointment of a editor-in-chief of little value saying that the Prime Minister wanted it. I went to Palazzo Chigi to ask him if it was true, Andreotti knew nothing about it.”
Do you come from a Christian Democratic family? “My parents voted for the DC.” What work did they do? “Dad was a medicine salesman, mother was a primary school teacher. They married on 24 July 1943. With great timing, I would say.” The day before Mussolini’s dismissal. “The honeymoon lasted one day, the time to go to and from Rivisondoli. The hotel had been bombed.” Mussolini’s detention in Campo Imperatore still fuels the story today according to which you are the son of the Duce: “It doesn’t add up – Vespa replies -. My mother went to teach in Assergi, the last town before the cable car to Campo Imperatore, where they had sent Mussolini, only in 1949. When ‘dad’ (he smiles, ed.) had already been dead for a few years.” He doesn’t seem bothered by the rumor. “I’m not. In fact, he makes me smile. My brother Stefano, on the other hand, was enraged by this thing.” Where and how did this story originate? “Where I don’t know. Like, maybe because I look a bit like Mussolini.”