Always very reserved and reluctant to show himself on TV, yesterday Nico Cutugno – only son of Toto Cutugno, who passed away last summer at the age of 80 – was a guest at Sunday In to talk about the father and their relationship. Born in ’89 from an extramarital affair, it was the singer’s wife – Carla Galli – who pushed him to recognize it. “However, it is something that was born from love, so there is nothing wrong” he told Mara Venier, describing a deep bond.
As a child Nico always experienced him as a normal dad, knowing nothing about his work: “For me he was simply my dad. It was normal to see him and I saw him often, but I had no idea who he was, that he had a public life. There is this episode that I always remember with a smile – he said – I was in the car with him, on the radio there was ‘I want to go and live in the countryside’. He was driving, I was next to him, a child, and something didn’t add up to me because the timbre of his voice was very recognisable. He told me he was an engineer. It was a way to protect myself and protect my privacy.”
He discovered everything at the age of 8: “When it came out that he was a famous person it was a bit of a shock. I found out because an article came out in the newspapers and so they had to tell me. He was a present father – he explained further – I always felt a lot of love from him. He was also extremely youthful, very easy going even with my friends, wherever we went he was always in on the joke, but he made sure I had those two/three rules of respect and education where I had been inappropriate, he would get very heated and quickly become nervous.”
The first phase of the tumor and the last days together
Nico has always been close to his father, since the first phase of the disease: “I was 18 years old. He lived it in his own way, perhaps he hadn’t accepted this thing, he didn’t take time to heal himself, to feel comfortable. I I remember that he did chemo during the week and went to concerts at the weekend, even when he lost his hair, he invented this thing that was for a fiction, he managed to fight with great courage, for me he was a great source inspiring for how he didn’t give in to his illness.” As I grew up, things changed: “Dad was 80 years old, I was 34, I always had the thought of losing him. We literally shared the last days of his life with great tenderness and affection, often in silence, and it was precisely the presence to take care of such a dramatic moment”.
