Corrado Augias leaves Rai after 63 years and joins La7
Corrado Augias leaves Rai after a collaboration lasting 63 years and arrives at La7 where, from next 4 December, he will host the cultural program The Tower of Babel.
Interviewed by Corriere della Sera, the journalist explains: “After years I succumbed to the courtship of Urbano Cairo and then also of the director Andrea Salerno. For the sake of the challenge.”
On the decision to leave Rai, Corrado Augias specifies: “No one kicked me out, but no one kept me. At 88 and a half years old I have to work in places and with people I like; and I don’t like this Rai”.
The journalist then retraces his career at Rai starting from when he was sent to New York as a correspondent: “Rai had the entire floor of a skyscraper on Sixth Avenue, the director was a Jew who fled the racial laws, George Padovano. I arrived by ship: eight days from Naples to Manhattan, with my wife and our daughter Natalia, who was one and a half years old. The furniture was loaded onto a ship which ended up at the mercy of a storm: we recovered it in pieces. So we bought some used furniture from the Salvation Army, and a couple of pieces of furniture were made for us by a young artist who loved wood: Mario Ceroli”.
During the interview with Aldo Cazzullo, the journalist admits that he once tried marijuana and cocaine but “without great effects. Another time I tried a little cocaine: zero effects. Maybe I inhaled it wrong.”
On Eugenio Scalfari, its director a The Republic, states: “A master, with two extraordinary qualities. The talent for storytelling: he kept the entire editorial team hanging, mouths wide open, as he told the story of what he had done the night before. The summary: he immediately found the key to a tangled situation.”
Corrado Augias then recalls how much he contributed to founding Rai 3: “Angelo Guglielmi called me, in his little voice: “We don’t have money to make dramas, but I will give you a program that will be our drama”. (Augias imitates Guglielmi perfectly). The idea came from Lio Beghin, a brilliant Paduan man: to contaminate the TV with the telephone. They were born like this Yellow telephone And Hot lineentrusted to Giuliano Ferrara”.
Furthermore, the journalist indulges in a judgment on Giorgia Meloni, who he defines as “Intelligent and a prisoner”. He then explains: “I think she would really like to build a conservative party, but she can’t, because of her comrades who block her with a hundred obstacles. I have no political sympathy for Giorgia, but I have human sympathy. She has a bad character, which helped her get there, but now she risks losing it. She should repress it”.
On Schlein, however, he states: “I wouldn’t want to talk about the left. What happened to that force that animated it for half a century? She seems to have evaporated”.
The reporter expresses some opinions on past politicians, including Silvio Berlusconi: “I hated him. Italy certainly didn’t need his bad example. I remember one of his visits to the financial police school. He told a joke: ‘There’s a knock on the door, who is he? Thieves! Thank goodness, I feared it was the financiers.’ And the future financiers laughed.”
And when asked what the secret of his longevity is, he replies: “Serenity. I know colleagues who are excellent but have aged badly, resentful, in credit with the world. I am a peaceful person. I don’t envy, I don’t desire. I take what comes, I don’t regret what didn’t come and won’t come.”
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