He owes his life to a truck, Enzo Ghinazzi aka Pupo. Had it not been for that truck that drove past him on the freeway, took him out of the car and decided to end it because he was plunged into debt and problems, caused an explosion that brought him to his senses, the singer would it don’t be here anymore today. “I am the example that you can get out of this tunnel with effort, pain and a lot of help from people who love and respect you,” Pupo told Domenica In.
The play tunnel
The tunnel he speaks of is that of gambling, which he became addicted to at the age of 14 thanks to his father Fiorello, who was also a gambler. “In his infinite sweetness, my father was a weak man and my mother Irene was in despair for years because her husband and son had fallen into the clutches of this demon,” the singer explained, before admitting the “only possible solution” at the time, to to get out of this hell that had now become his life. ‘I was thinking of ending it all – admitted Pupo -. One day, returning from the Casino in Venice, I stopped on the viaduct that separates Emilia Romagna from Tuscany. I had a Jaguar because I was desperate to prove I was rich, but I couldn’t afford it. It was smoke and mirrors. I got out of the car. Everything was very narrow in this section of the old Autostrada del Sole. But a truck drove by, causing such air movement that my car moved as well, and this woke me from the freeze and oblivion I had fallen into. I thought “but what do I do?”. I got back in the car and drove home.’ And in September of the same year Gianni Boncompagni called him to conduct Domenica In with Fenech. “My life started from there,” concluded Pupo, who in his singing career has made songs like “Gelato al Chocolate” and “Su di noi” a success, as well as writing others that have become very famous, including “It want be because I love you” that the Ricchi e Poveri brought to the Sanremo Festival in 1981.