Oh yes! There was a time when I believed in satire. Some people believe in Santa Claus, some believe in a deity or a political faction, some believe in justice or in a singer-songwriter. I believed in satire. I know, I admit it, I was naive — but who hasn't been, at least for a while?

Satire in itself is a good thing, like so many abstract ideas and ideologies. But the world of Real Humour is often the opposite of what it seems, as one fine day I inevitably had to discover.

In the beginning was Il Male, contrary to what the Bible maintains. Il Male was a satirical weekly published in the nineteen-seventies. It was the only Italian satirical magazine truly capable of desecrating and mocking the customs — and the unscrupulous — of its era. This is an objective historical fact. The proof? In order to exist, Il Male kept its managing editor permanently resident in jail. And with every issue of the weekly his sentence grew longer. Only in this way was Il Male able to exercise its freedom of opinion and of the press. One thing is certain: some of these gentlemen had balls.

Then Il Male ceased publication. Years later, I found myself reading a greenish tabloid that some will remember: Cuore. Initially a supplement to l'Unità, it soon became an independent paper. At least in appearance. For a while it amused me, even though it clearly had little of the irreverent spirit of Il Male. Then something happened that brought me definitively back to my senses.

The year was 1991, and it was July. I had read in the weekly Cuore that a self-styled "Festival of Satire" would shortly be held in a little town in Emilia, organised by Cuore itself. At that time I had not yet lost all my faith in satire, so I thought — somewhat rashly, and very mystically — that the event might turn out to be of interest to me.

So, one particular afternoon in July '91, I dropped by the house of my friend Gigi Picetti and I suggested we pop over to the festival of satire. Bewitched as well by this abstract idea, he joined me; we set off at once from Genoa and a few hours later, in the evening, we reached Montecchio, the little town in Emilia where the festival was being held.

With immediate horror we immediately discovered that the so highly praised festival of satire was, in short, nothing more than an utterly ordinary Festa dell'Unità. During those very days there was a Festa dell'Unità in Genoa too, so we felt rather stupid for having driven three hours to attend a fair identical to the one we had on our doorstep.

Distressed, we searched high and low for a bit of satire or something of the sort, but all we found was a kind of packed amphitheatre where thousands of people sheepishly listened to a sort of talk show being staged. In short, it was like watching the Maurizio Costanzo Show, except that the guests were the various Michele Serra, Paolo Hendel, Fabio Fazio and the like, prattling among themselves without quite knowing what to say, as generally happens in any talk show.

Although we didn't quite understand why we had gone there, Gigi Picetti and I were nonetheless certain of one thing: we couldn't have cared less about listening to people intent on talking to one another to say things less interesting than what we could say between ourselves. And the sheepish mass in mute adoration on the terraces of the amphitheatre was, in its mute passivity, even more disgusting than the presumptuous people on the stage. If you understand why, good; otherwise, never mind.

Too late to head back to Genoa, we had to drown in beer the disappointment of being there and, after going in to badmouth things a little in a video booth, we finally retired to sleep in the tent we had brought along.

We had noticed that the area, notoriously infested with mosquitoes, was instead extraordinarily free of them. Someone explained that there had been a good pest-control treatment that year. We took this as our cue and decided to do the most improbable thing anyone could ever do: we improvised a collection of signatures against the grim extermination of the mosquitoes. Why did we do it? Well, what else could we ever have done?

Thus was born SENZACUORE.
Senzacuore was a cardboard placard (one and a half metres by one), on which Gigi Picetti and I had improvised the first nonsense that came into our heads. In some way I can't recall, we then managed to print and photocopy a fair number of fake signature-collection forms. Armed with all this, we wandered around the supposed "festival of satire" bawling as if we really gave a damn about the fate of the mosquitoes. Incredible to say, everyone took us seriously. Openly displaying their hatred of mosquitoes, people refused to sign. At the so-called festival of satire, nobody was able to recognise as such a stupid satirical stunt like ours.

Meanwhile it was already midday, and we happened to stumble upon a table with all the festival's VIPs. The various Michele Serra, Fabio Fazio, and so on. To our astonishment, they too gave no sign of understanding what exactly was happening in front of them. I remember Fabio Fazio saying "It's pointless. It's no use anyway." I never understood what he was referring to.

After a while we'd had enough. Being there made no sense. We took down the tent, got into the car and drove back to Genoa.

Nonetheless, we were indignant. Although we had always known that Cuore had nothing in common with Il Male, we believed that a little intelligence circulated there too. After all, can satire exist without intelligence? No, it can't. But that's not the point. The essence of the problem was in fact something else, and the right question to ask had to be:
"Is Cuore really a satirical paper?"

So we decided to invest a couple of afternoons to bring to life Crepacuore. No one had ever done the satire of satire, and at that time and in those days it seemed to us the most fitting thing to do. Or, at the very least, the least boring.

It was 1991, and laser printers had recently become affordable to everyone. Gigi Picetti and I set to with a will and after two afternoons we came out with an A3 sheet printed front and back with what was our reply to the disappointment Cuore. We photocopied it into hundreds of copies.

A few days later I went back to the so-called "festival of satire" of Cuore and plastered it everywhere with Crepacuore. Incredible but true, the organisers (self-styled standard-bearers of satire) took considerable offence. One of them in particular showed himself greatly offended by the fact that we had compared their Cuore to the then-fashionable television variety show Creme Caramel (a piece of trash with Pippo Franco, if I remember rightly). Astonished, I naively replied that we had been doing satire. He seemed not to grasp what I was talking about. It was too much.

Back in Genoa, I expected at the very least that in the following issues of the weekly Cuore, in the ample space devoted to celebrating their "festival of satire", some mention would appear of the happenings I had staged there with Gigi Picetti. I was young and naive, and I still struggled to convince myself that the self-styled professionals of satire had no sense of humour at all, at least where self-irony is concerned. By now, however, the facts spoke clearly, and my dismay at having let myself be fooled by their disguises mounted unstoppably. In plain words, I was more and more pissed off.

Which is why I got in touch with Vincenzo Sparagna, already the founder of Il Male, Frigidaire, and of other worthy ventures on the edge of madness. We understood each other at once. He was about to send to press a new periodical, Tempi Supplementari, and we decided to insert into it a satirical supplement called Crepacuore, just as once l'Unità had had an insert called Cuore.
And so, in early November 1991, the first issue of Tempi Supplementari hit the newsstands. And its satirical supplement was called Crepacuore.

What you see above are the four pages of the first issue of Crepacuore. The layout and the texts are all mine and Picetti's, some of the cartoons too, while others are by Scozzari and Giuliano. Laura Bagliani also lent a hand with some of the drawings.

Here is the first side of the second issue of Crepacuore. We have nothing to do, however, with the ugly cartoon of Occhetto in the middle of the page. It was inserted without our knowledge.

Below, on the other hand, a cartoon of ours that we do have something to do with.

CREPACUORE - CARTOON view light version (114 K)

CREPACUORE - CARTOON view heavy version (272 K)

Alongside here, DONALD FUCK, a creation of ours that nonetheless never had the development it would have deserved. Made together with an illustrator friend, it had no sequel owing to the fact that Crepacuore stopped after the second issue.

Why didn't we carry on? I no longer remember. Probably because there was no money to be made from it. And some other minor reason.