BEPPE GRILLO

'Giuseppe Grillo', better known as 'Beppe Grillo' (born July 21, 1948), is an Italian comedian and actor, who also works in theatres and television.

Contents

Biography

Beppegrillo.it

Legal problems

Filmography

External links

Biography

Grillo was born in Savignone, a small town in the Province of Genoa, Liguria.
After receiving his degree as an accountant, Grillo became a comedian by chance, improvising a monologue in an audition. Two weeks later he was discovered and launched by Italian TV presenter Pippo Baudo. He subsequently participated in the variety show ''Secondo Voi'' for two years (1977-78). Later, in 1979, he participated in ''Luna Park'' by Enzo Trapani, and ''Fantastico''.
In the 1980s his success rose further, thanks to shows like ''Te la do io l'America'' (1982, 4 episodes) and ''Te lo do io il Brasile'' (1984, six episodes). In these shows, he narrated his experiences of his visits to the United States and Brazil, with anecdotes and witticisms about the culture, lifestyle and beauty of these places.
As a result, his popularity grew more and more, and he became the protagonist of another show developed especially for him, called ''Grillometro'' (''Grillometer''). In 1986, he was the star of prize-winning advertisements for a brand of yogurt.
Soon after this, his performances began to be characterized by an increasing level of political satire, often expressed in such a direct way that he quickly offended a lot of Italian politicians. In 1987 during the Saturday night TV show ''Fantastico 7'', he attacked the Italian Socialist Party and its leader Bettino Craxi, then Italy's Prime Minister, on the occasion of his visit in the People's Republic of China. Grillo said:

If the Chinese are all socialists, whom do they steal from?''

The joke hinted at the totalitarianism of the PRC, but even more to the widespread corruption for which the Italian Socialist Party was known. As a consequence, Grillo was effectively and silently banished from publicly owned television; yet, he was vindicated a few years later when the Italian Socialist Party had to be disbanded in a welter of corruption scandals known as Tangentopoli, uncovered by the Mani pulite investigation. Craxi himself died in Tunisia, unable to return to Italy where he would have been jailed for several convictions.
Consequently, from the beginning of the 1990s his appearances on television became rare: according to many people, the reason for this is a silent ostracism by politicians offended by his revelations about their hidden financial activities, frauds and false claims. When one of his shows was finally allowed to be broadcast by RAI, in 1993, it obtained a record share of 16 million viewers.

Beppegrillo.it

He currently performs in theatres in Italy and abroad, with outstanding success. Grillo's themes include energy usage, political and corporate corruption, finance, freedom of speech, child exploitation, globalization, and technology. Recently Grillo started to encourage the use of Wikipedia as the future of knowledge sharing.
He maintains a blog (available in Italian and English) at beppegrillo.it which is updated daily. Comments to posts regularly top the thousands (in the Italian version). According to Technorati, the blog is ranked among the 10 most visited blogs in the world.
He often receives and post letters of appreciation or solidarity from prominent figures, such as Antonio Di Pietro (Italian Minister Of Infrastructures), Fausto Bertinotti (President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies), Renzo Piano, even Nobel Prize Winners and also Pope Benedict XVI.
On 1 September, 2005, thanks to the contributions from readers of his blog, Grillo bought a full page announcement in the Italian newspaper ''La Repubblica'' to demand the resignation of the Bank of Italy's (then) governor Antonio Fazio as a result of the Antonveneta banking scandal. In October 2005, ''Time'' chose him as one of the "European Heroes 2005" for his constant battle against corruption and financial scandals[1].

On 22 November, 2005 Grillo also bought a page in the ''International Herald Tribune'', this time pointing out that members of the Italian Parliament must not represent citizens if they have ever been convicted by the courts. [2]. His blog now contains a regularly updated list of members of the Italian Parliament who have been convicted. Operation "Clean Paliament".
On 26 july, 2007 Grillo has had the possibility to speak to the members of the European Parliament in Brussels, illustrating the serious, negative situation of the actual Italian politics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32_qdNKnUGE
In this occasion, Grillo has promoted officially the V-DAY (8 September 2007). With the V-DAY (Supported in more than 170 Italian cities and to the foreign country) Grillo wants to spur the Italians to a collection of signatures in order to introduce a Bill of popoular initiative for raise from their charges the members of Italian Parliament convicted for varied reasons.
http://www.beppegrillo.it/english.php

Legal problems

In 1980 he was found guilty of culpable homicide for a car accident in which he was the driver; three passengers lost their lives (La paga di Giuda, «Il Blog di Beppe Grillo», September 16 2005).
During his shows Grillo never hesitates from citing by name firms and personalities he considers corrupt, always explaining his views with data and documents. For this reason he has been sued several times for libel by many people and organizations he exposed, such as Telecom Italia.
When Italian judges were investigating the Parmalat scandal, which was then the world's largest corporate bankruptcy scandal ever, Grillo was called to testify as he anticipated the imminent collapse of the dairy conglomerate in one of his shows. When he was asked by judges how he has been able to discover that, he simply said that Parmalat's financial holes were so evident that anybody who had enough ability to see them would see them, since the corporate accounting was easily accessible.

Filmography

Grillo has appeared in three movies:

★ ''Cercasi Gesù'' (1982)

★ ''Scemo di Guerra'' (1985)

★ ''Topo Galileo'' (1987)

External links

★ Beppe Grillo's personal blog

★ 'Time' article about Grillo

★ Beppe Grillo´s fans meeting map around the world