When in 1998 he withdrew the Telegatto to his career together with Sandra, he did not give up joke about: “Usually this prize sounds like a seal and after the career one the prize in memory comes, which I hope one day to be able to collect”. The reaction to the joke of Raimondo Vianello arrived at a few seconds and, as often happens, sparked an even more disruptive laugh. Mondaini, perplexed, asked for explanations, obtaining the second act of Freddura: “It is not said that everything is done in pairs”.

Cynical and passionate about a black humor that did not even spare his wife, Vianello knew how to overturn rhetoric, transforming it into cold water buckets. As a result, the risk has always been to take him seriously, if only his eyes did not smile every time, as if to reassure the public. I knew him audience and that that healthy malice was looking for it punctually, because he could not do without it.

After April 15, 2010, Raimondo Vianello, with a degree in Law in the pocket, immediately understood that that could not be his way and Virò – our luck – on the world of entertainment.

The first steps took place alongside Ugo Tognazzi, with whom he proposed one of the first shows of Italian TV: “One, two, three”. The troubles for the two arrived in 1959, when they decided to ironic on the accident occurred to the President of the Republic Giovanni Gronchi, who fell from the chair during an evening at the Scala with De Gaulle. The episode, hidden by the media, was missing to say it ridden by Vianello, who sfired the chair in Tognazzi, making him slip on the floor. The joke that followed (“Who do you think you are?”) It was enough to cause the suspension of the program.

The indissoluble bond with Sandra Mondaini

It is in that period that Mondaini met. ‘Sandra and Raimondo‘it therefore became a single name, to be pronounced in one breath, a symbol of comedy and elegance. First in Rai and, since the eighties, also on commercial TV. Silvio Berlusconi in fact courted them, as he had previously done with Mike Bongiorno and Corrado.

“We didn’t know him and received it at home,” said Vianello years later. “They had told us about a very rich man, but the first thing he asked for once he arrived was something to eat. He divided a sandwich. Then I said to Sandra: are we sure that this has the money?”.

Joints that hid affection and gratitude, because Fininvest (then Mediaset) represented a real turning point for his career both by Vianello and Mondaini. It was here that Raimondo patrolled the universe of the quizzes, such as “Zig Zag” and “The game of the nine”, and was able to give vent to his football passion with the conduct of “pressing”.

At the end of the nineties Mediaset took him back to Rai for the classic opportunity that cannot be refused: the Sanremo Festival. Vianello arrived at the Ariston at the age of 76, accompanied by Eva Herzigova and Veronica Pivetti, respectively called to play the role of Bellona and Imbranata. The stumbling block, however, came with Madonna who, after the execution of ‘Frozen’, was hastily dismissed and removed from the stage: “We must go on …”. I slip that the fans of the pop star never forgive him.

Lonely experiences to which was added the true distinctive brand of the couple, or that “Vianello house” which since 1988 extended for sixteen seasons and 338 episodes. The iconic epilogue in the bedroom, with Raimondo distracted by the reading of the Gazzetta and Sandra perpetually bored intent on baking under the covers, has become a piece of TV history. Exhilarating above all because substantially true, as Vianello himself confided in an episode of “Between wife and husband”: “The first dispute? It happened just married. The first evening, at a certain point, I started reading the Gazzetta dello Sport”.

In symbiosis even at the time of leaving

The apparent detachment actually hid a solid, armored bond. And every now and then the interested interesteds removed the mask to leave room for sweetness: “If I think of my past I seem to have been born only the day I met him – said Mondaini – my life before I don’t remember it at all”. And Vianello, in a moment of exceptional sincerity admitted: “I love my wife very well. We have known each other, estimated immediately, appreciated, close -knit. There are many things even in the judgments of people, events and great tenderness”.

He left five months before Sandra, who in that period of time practically never returned to live. Five months that, in reality, neither for them nor have they ever existed for us. Sandra and Raimondo, in fact, dismissed together.