Massimo Cotto, “SanremoLab” and the candid camera
Since this morning I have been answering the phone to those who call to tell me how sorry they are for the passing of Massimo Cotto. I don’t want to recall here the many things I did together with Massimo, from the two editions of “Radar” to the many SanremoLab/Area Sanremo to the five editions of the Rockol Awards: I don’t want to enter into the competition about who was his best friend. And so I will tell you, or rather I will have him tell you (he recalled it in his “Pleased to meet you”, the book released in 2013), the prank I played on him, with many accomplices, precisely on the last day of the SanremoLab selections in 2008. Just so, to remember him with a smile.
SANREMOLAB 2008. God willing, we are at the end of the first selections. Three hundred young and strong. The Commission that I preside over must choose two hundred, who will then become one hundred, then forty and finally twelve. From those twelve, Pippo Baudo will choose the three who will go to the Sanremo festival. We are about to let the last contestant enter. As always, let’s first read the curriculum and the lyrics of the song. Her name is Melissa, she studied first at the Ursoline and then at another religious institute. Her song is called “Lo voglio grosso”. The lyrics are a continuous double entendre, sometimes funny, other times bordering on good taste. The refrain begins with the line: “I like those who have it big” and then continues with “the bank account”. Okay, let’s see.
Melissa enters. Tall, thin, very beautiful. My type. Long hair, stiletto-heeled boots, and nude-colored sheer stockings. She’s wearing a tight, dark leather trench coat. Simply perfect. I’m about to say the usual two words to reassure the contestants and try to put them at ease, but Melissa beats me to it: “They told me you put everyone at ease. I’d like to put myself completely at ease.” She takes off her trench coat, throws it on the floor, and is left half-naked, in stockings and a slip. I smile. I know from experience that it’s best to indulge crazy people. “Whatever you say, Melissa, but we’d prefer…”
Davide from security enters the scene. He picks up the trench coat, covers Melissa, almost forcefully grabs her and escorts her to the door, saying, “We don’t like these things.” As he escorts her to the exit, Melissa looks at me and says, “Massimo, do you want me to tell everyone that you took me to a hotel in Asti during your festival, promising that you’d let me through?”
Melissa comes out. I can’t breathe. Before I can clearly reiterate that I’ve never seen that girl before, Pierluigi Ferrantini of Velvet, on the Commission with me, intervenes: “Did you really screw her?”. I turn to glare at him. “Are you crazy?”, I say. Enrico Ruggeri, another commissioner, intervenes: “Maybe you don’t remember.” It seems like a nightmare to me. First rule: total detachment from the contestants. No exceptions. I look at everyone in the room with me. The president of Sanremo Promotion Maurizio Caridi, the assistants, the secretaries, the Commission, security, the technicians. Their eyes say they don’t believe me. No one speaks.
Then, after an eternal silence, Franco Zanetti, a great friend and vice president, points his finger at a distant point, from which the end of a camera emerges: “Smile, you’re on our Candid Camera”.
