Cristina Parodi, journalist and now also stylist, told Corriere della Sera about herself. Her beginnings, her marriage to Giorgio Gori, her colleagues and finally fashion. For my debut on Tg5 “I chose a canary yellow suit by Max Mara with jewel buttons. I had prepared as if for an exam: I had read and reread the texts. In the end I had them in my head, even though I knew that Enrico Mentana could change everything at the last minute and so he did.”
“It was a moment of great visibility: Famiglia Cristiana dedicated the cover to Tg5 with my photo. We were very busy: there were very few of us but we realized that we were doing something historic”, said the journalist. It was her passion for writing that brought her to television. “I liked writing and in high school I hosted a small music program on a local TV station in my city, Alessandria. While I was studying at the Faculty of Letters in Milan I supported myself with a thousand odd jobs: playing tennis at competitive levels I was a hostess and speaker at the most important tournaments”.
His entry into Mediaset came through football, although his true passion was tennis. “It was the nineties, women talking about football worked. To me, who was in love with tennis, football didn't matter at all: I had to learn it by buying the Gazzetta dello Sport every day and studying it.”
Cristina Parodi then denied having encountered chauvinism in her working environment: “No, in fact I was surrounded by great masters like Maurizio Mosca who always helped and respected me”. The hosting debut with Emilio Fede: “An affectionate and brilliant man, but some of his outbursts were inconceivable to me. Paolo Brosio and I were the markers: we had two desks outside his office and we highlighted the agencies that came out to him, he was certainly not the type to stay at the computer”.
Enrico Mentana's years at Tg5 marked the turning point in his professional career, and also the first meeting with the man who would later become her husband: Giorgio Gori. “I, Cesara Buonamici, Alessandro Cecchi Paone and Lamberto Sposini were the “chosen ones””. To understand something more, one day Cesara took courage and called the then young director of Canale 5 Giorgio Gori, who was on holiday in Baja California. He was kind and he told us: “Whoever jumps on it does well”. I would have gone even without that advice from my future husband, but that was the seal.”
Of his colleagues from those times he remembers Enrico Mentana as “an absolute genius”. Lamberto Sposini “fascinating and pleasant to be around. It pains me that he had this health problem, he who was a man of communication and words.” Cesara Buonamici “a teacher because she had done a lot of politics, even if I never wanted to do politics. We see little of her, but I have great affection for her.”
For 30 years Cristina Parodi has been married to Giorgio Gori, now mayor of Bergamo. “We fell in love in Rome: he continually came to the editorial office for meetings. The first time I saw him he was 31 but he looked like he was 18: he was the child prodigy and he was so cool,” he recalled. But her love with the young director of Canale 5 “has never been a driving force, but in some moments a limitation, due to that constant fear of making it easier for me”.
After the wedding, the choice to leave Tg5 for Verissimo, Rome for Milan, also for family reasons: “I commuted to Bergamo every day: I waited in line and read the newspaper. Fatigue has never scared me and the children have been a blessing. Of course I lived with feelings of guilt, but while they were little I eliminated all diversions: I worked and went home, sports, shopping and friends didn't exist.” A love about which there have never been second thoughts: “We still tell ourselves today, when we go to the cinema, to dinner: there is no other person in the world with whom we feel as comfortable. Even on car trips alone, without talking to each other. Giorgio still manages to amaze me.”
Now the adventure in fashion: “Now I want to be a stylist and an entrepreneur. Maybe later return to TV, but with a program on fashion.”
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