Farewell by Fabio Fazio, ovation at the end of Che tempo che fa. And Michele Serra jokes: “What party did Topo Gigio belong to?”

“Thank you all from the bottom of my heart, it becomes difficult like this to get to the end of a long evening”. As Fabio Fazio opens his latest episode of the show ‘Che tempo che fa’ on Rai3 welcomed by an ovation and thunderous applause from the studio audience. After twenty years of militancy in Rai, the Ligurian conductor will move to Canale Nove from next year with a new broadcast.

Fabio Fazio is silent but has next to him Michael Serra who begins the episode by tracing his personal “political history of Rai” with a sort of editorial. Serra wonders what party they belonged to “Topo Gigio, the Quartetto Cetra, Tognazzi and Vianello were one of the left and one of the right? And to get closer to the present day, what party are Amadeus, Fiorello, Mara Venier, Vespa, so Cavour put it is he from the historic right?” For the journalist and writer, “it is a stupid speech, because it is difficult to explain a story that is only partially political with politics. Luckily the work of people is stronger, no one has ever wondered in the past if Topo Gigio was from right or left but now everyone would be wondering which party he would belong to”.

And to the “minister of culture Gennaro Sangiuliano who said here that there are Stalinists at Rai, we wonder how difficult it was for him to survive when he was director of Tg2, did they keep him locked up in a dungeon?”. For Serra, “there is a bad climate with a tendency to pigeonhole everything and everyone, forced to feel indebted to someone. In Rai there are many more people who do it alone. If I were a right-wing intellectual I’d be worried, they’d say I got on the bandwagon, that I’m not arriving because I’m good but because of my political affiliation. The time has come for a reflection – concludes Serra – Rai belongs to the state not to the parties, the atmosphere will remain toxic now and it is serious because many good people also work there”.