Pino Pagano Sanremo Suicide Attempt – Pippo Baudo
Pino Pagano says he remembers with “bitterness and scratch” that distant February 23, 1995, when the historic Sicilian TV conductor stopped him nationally at the Ariston: “I have never been paid, he knew nothing but he gave me 50,000 lire. Gianni Morandi tried to make us peace “
«Per Pippo I’m very sorry, I’m upset. Unfortunately I had no longer had a relationship with him for some time, but even if I have known him little, I always had the feeling that it was A very beautiful person: I will never forgive me what I did thirty years ago and he will remain in my heart ».
These are the first words that, with a thread of voice, the 69 -year -old Pagan pine rivolge a Pippo Baudo, two days after his disappearance. Remembering, with “bitterness and regret”, that distant February 23, 1995when the historic Sicilian TV presenter He stopped him live nationally in Sanremo, in front of to 16 million viewers, From “an staged suicide”, which in Pagano earned no “promised money”, nor the “fame that I wanted”.
Today, after various health problems and the removal of a lung, From his popular house to Castel Maggiore Pagano is said to be “resigned” of the image that has delivered to the “memory of Italians”. But, he admits, “if I could review Baudo one last time, I would tell him that I am sorry, that he was right”. Among those who expressed very heartfelt memories for Baudo there was Carlo Conti, but also Paolo Bonolis. There were those who like Abundant He didn’t have a positive memory.
They pay, how does the disappearance of Pippo Baudo live?
“Very bad, what happened really upset me: I already suffer from health problems, I speak with a thread of voice because I was removed a lung and this news is a further blow”.
What is the last time you met?
“When Gianni Morandi tried to mediate between us in Castrocaro, not long after what had happened in Sanremo in February of ’95, when I pretended to commit suicide by throwing myself from the ariston balustrade: Pippo was very angry with me, and he was also right, because I was wrong, speaking in front of a Rai 3 troupe of truth on that evening, which was all planned. I asked to turn off the cameras, but they filmed me: they screwed me. Gianni tried to act as an ambassador, but in the end he told me that he didn’t want to know anything anymore ».
Do you often think in the evening of the “staged uicide”? At the time it was thought of a desperate gesture, it was said that he found no work …
«It happened 30 years ago, but it seems happened yesterday and I always think about it: every year I will be remembered for that script which, I am sincere, I would not redo. On that occasion, to prevent me from jumping down, Pippo had come, that he encouraged me, he said that I was good, that I knew how to sing and act. But in reality I also admit that I had never been unemployed, I was a road haulier: I just wanted to become famous, write a book, make myself. It was a lightness of when I was young, to think that I could become someone pretending live. Among other things, I never received a pay from Rai to the promised ones ».
So it was never paid?
«No: even if it had been the Rai, of the journalists I knew, to contact me to do what I did. Only Baudo gave me 50 thousand lire: even if it is not with him that I had taken the agreements and I still don’t know if at the time he knew that everything had been organized at the table. Of course, as soon as he came out he dissociated himself ».
How did the following years go?
«A year later, I made a” Martina “album, with Umberto Maggi and the Nomads. Now they sell it on the internet though and also for that I do not perceive a penny ».
What would Baudo say today if he could?
«I would like to tell him that I was wrong, but it is as if I had fallen something bigger than me that I have not been able to manage. I think that if I had re -established things with him they would have gone differently. But so, I was only immortalized by that situation and I regretted it bitterly ».