Of
Renato Franco
«Cecchetto taught me everything about radio. Linus always helped me. Today I stand straight but I will always have the stigma. Salvation? My partner who is 26 years younger”
We are republishing Renato Franco’s interview with Marco Baldini, published on 22 January 2025, one of the most appreciated by our readers in 2025.
“I’m going through a bad time for a change.”
How much did he earn in his golden age?
«I made almost a million euros a year, I was around 800 thousand. To this day I’m still amazed that they paid me so much to be an idiot.”
How much do you have in your account today?
«Wait while I check… 29 euros».
Marco Baldini falls into the category of those specialists in falling back, many peaks and many abyss, one day up, the other infinitely down, the peak and the precipice. The partnership with Fiorello — on the radio, but also on TV — seemed indissoluble. Eternal while it lasted.
Does her past haunt her?
«They look at me – I add, rightly – with suspicion. With the past I have had and with what has been written about me, people think not twice, but twenty times about giving me a hand. And in the end they say no.”
Are they wrong not to trust?
«I’ve learned one thing: it’s never anyone else’s fault, it’s always your fault, for better or for worse. If I’ve reached this point I don’t blame anyone, it was my mistake that to protect myself from a worse problem – and here I can’t go much further – my lawyer and I invented the story of compulsive gambling, which was the only escape.”
I’ll step back. Until 2022 we all thought that Marco Baldini was a gambling addict, gambling and horses were his weak points. He told it. Then from then on he began to reveal another truth (“I was never a gambling addict, it was a cover for more serious troubles. I had ended up in a crime ring – he said -. I was earning exorbitant amounts of money thanks to some people who after two years needed to invest a larger sum to build a real estate complex of luxury homes”. Baldini bets everything, “almost two billion lire”. But it was a scam and he loses everything. From that moment on, money became a problem for someone who had always had it.)
You also wrote a book about your gambling addiction.
«I asked for six months, in reality I had to do some research because I knew little or nothing about it and in doing so I fell into it, but not to the enormous levels we are talking about. They even made a film about it and so the whole of Italy was convinced that I was a compulsive gambler.”
Wasn’t it?
“No. I repeat, I fell for it in the search to be credible in what I was saying: if you get too close to the fire you will get burned.”
But you talked about certain figures.
“To justify the release of those large sums of money.”
Didn’t he play horses?
«Yes, I liked it, but my stories were exaggerated».
Ever lost 40 million lire in one game?
«No, never. I have never lost certain figures.”
What does he do now?
«I’ve done the bulk of it now, with Fiorello thanks to The biggest show after the weekend we exceeded 13 million viewers. Today I make ends meet, I make available what I know how to do. Once a week I’m on Lazio TV, with Morena Rosini, the singer of Milk and Coffee, who if you say ex-singer of Milk and Coffee gets pissed off: we host Capital vicesa living room that hosts various humanity. And then I work at Radio Roma Sound where I enjoy doing my usual bullshit. With these little things I earn a small salary which allows me to live with my family.”
Do you remember the past with more regret or anger?
«I have made the Dalai Lama’s words my own: there are two days in which you can’t do anything, one is called yesterday, the other is called tomorrow. I don’t look at the past, I’m learning to live in the present.”
Do you get in touch with Fiorello?
«He was very busy with VivaRai2, in the last few months we got a little lost, but every now and then we spoke».
Is a reunion with him possible?
“Impossible. And I was wrong. There was a time when I was out of touch with the world, I lived in very precarious conditions, I even slept in the car, and I made unforgivable mistakes. He waited for me for a long time, then when he saw that there was no more fat he said enough.”
The most unforgivable thing he did to Fiorello?
«In the period in which I was out of my mind I was talking to a guy who asked me for money, we were intercepted and offended Fiore, but I could have offended my father, my mother, my sister… I could have offended anyone, because I was out of control. I made a big mistake, I used bad words (among other things he said that he didn’t pay him enough and that “those around him took the crumbs”, ed.), and at that point a person rightly finds it difficult to trust those who talk about you in a certain way.”
Amadeus and Fiorello were in fact on the Sanremo stage for five years. She could have been there too.
«I was happy for them, Fiore had always said it: if I didn’t pair up with you the only one I could try with is Amadeus. One thing that isn’t my own is envy, in fact I’m happy with the success of others.”
Cecchetto had thrown it.
«Claudio was my radio father, he introduced me to Deejay in 1990, but I started doing radio in 1978: in those previous 12 years I had done everything wrong. I learned from ’90 onwards and he taught me. I owe him everything.”
What did he teach her?
«Two things: be curious and observe what happens around».
Linus?
«He is a true friend, with a capital L, he has helped me on many occasions without ever asking for anything in return. He once told me something that I understood only years later: if you don’t give them back to me, you will be indebted to the universe.”
Were you referring to the 100 million lire he lent you without a return receipt?
«Not only that. For me Linus is an older brother.”
How do you see the future at 65?
«I don’t think about the past or the future, I think about the present. I think about raising my son Leonardo well, there are many financial constraints, but my partner – who is 26 years younger than me – is my lifeline.”
A reality show could be an opportunity. Or not?
«But no, I’m old. I can’t show up in the morning while I wash up at Big Brother. On the Island of the Famous, with the bad luck I have when jumping from the helicopter, I would hit the only rock in the ocean.”
«La Fattoria» won in 2009.
«There were Corona, Marina Ripa di Meana, Lory Del Santo. Everyone came from a more or less comfortable everyday life, but I came from a period in which the banks called me, I had creditors on my back, the phone rang a thousand times a day. There they had confiscated our cell phones and I was in heaven. The others complained, no one bothered me.”
Did he deeply understand his mistakes?
“I’ve been going straight for years.”
But does the stigma remain?
“That will always remain.”
December 28, 2025
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