The difficult relationship with her mother, her husband’s betrayal, her passion for gambling and some somewhat ungrateful artists. Mara Maionchi, Italian record producer and television personality, is Francesca Fagnani’s guest in the last seasonal episode of Beasts, recounts important episodes of his private and professional life. Starting from that distance of affection with his mother, incapable of showing her love. «Mum was strange, she wasn’t an affectionate woman, but she was very strong», he confesses to the Rai2 programme, «I missed something, I urged her all my life to give me affection, a hug, something… but she didn’t have it. And I understood it later. Everyone is as they are.” A complicated woman who didn’t even go to her wedding: “They make me sad, she told me.” Married since 1976 to the lyricist and record producer Alberto Salerno, many years ago Maionchi discovered her husband’s betrayal, finding a hotel receipt in her trouser pocket. «I have to admit that it was also partly my fault if she looked for something outside», she reflects today, «sexually I’m a bit modest, I’m not really good at red lights. I always have the bedside lamp.” As is her character, between serious and ironic, Maionchi is then pressed by Fagnani about her career. The presenter asks her who, among the many artists encountered on her path, was a little ungrateful and did not recognize a role in her success. «Tiziano Ferro», she admits with some reticence, «you didn’t think that both my husband and I helped him to be what in the end, in part, he is. But this is not important, it is not an obligation to be grateful.” Finally, there is another chapter that you address during the interview, that of gambling addiction. “I can’t say if I have an addiction” to gambling, “but I like it.” And she then talks about when she sent a letter to the casinos in Italy and Switzerland asking them not to admit her to the tables anymore: «I got myself suspended, I was exaggerating. That was a way to defend himself.”
