Beppe Grillo, comedian, blogger, would-be politician, scourge of the Italian government and defender of free speech, is to tour Europe to “tell them what Italy has become”.
His show, “Incredible Italy”, will make its tour debut at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 27th January and he will take it to Brussels, Paris, Monaco, Zurich and Basel in February.
On 8th February Grillo, at the invitation of Vienna’s Councillor for the Environment, travels to the city to take part in a debate on the Mochovce Nuclear Plant [Slovakia]. The plant uses Soviet technology and is therefore considered dangerous by environmentalists. The major share holder is the Italian utility company Enel. Grillo has made his opposition to the plant well known.
Grillo is famous as the creator of “economic-ecological satire” because of the subjects he covers. However, he explains that “Incredible Italy” is “the story of a nation projected into the past and the future, never the present” and that it is neither satire nor comedy but “hyperrealism”. He warns us that anything that can happen in Italy eventually happens elsewhere.
Giuseppe Piero Grillo was born in Genoa [Liguria] in 1948. He graduated as an accountant and began his comedy career by chance. In the 1970s and 1980s he regularly appeared in successful television shows, including one of his own, “Grillometro”.
His humour became increasingly satirical from the 1980s and he offended many politicians. From the 1990s his television appearances became rare and, despite a 1993 appearance which drew record viewing figures, he was later banned from Italian television.
In 2005 Grillo started his blog, which, with around 160,000 hits a day, is now among the ten most visited blogs in the world. In the same year Time Magazine voted him one of its European Heroes.
