Beppe Grillo

Early years

Beppe Grillo was born July 21, 1948 in Genoa (according to other sources - in Sauvignon , province of Genoa ). The son of Enrico Grillo, owner of Cannelli Grillo (gas welding equipment manufacturing). According to the memoirs of his brother Andrea, Beppe was a “clown” in the family since childhood - for example, being in the form of Ray Charles for dinner. He has a secondary specialized education - he studied accounting at a private institute named after Ugolino Vivaldi in Genoa. Since 1968 he worked in a family company, in 1971 he quit. He began to try himself in a Genoese cabaret, earned money by selling jeans, but in 1975 the owner of the company fired him after Beppe told him about his true vocation ^{[3] [4]} .

Comedian

After some time, he was "discovered" in the Milan Theater of Bullon . In 1977, Grillo made his television debut - the Videobox program (Rete 1 channel). In the same year, he took part in the Sunday afternoon noon program Secondo voi , associated with the Lotteria Italia lottery. In 1979, together with he led the Fantastico program, in 1981 he invented and led the Te la do io l'America program, and in 1984 - Te lo do io il Brasile . November 15, 1986 became the author of a monologue in one of the releases of the Fantastico 7 program. The quarrel with the Socialist Party resulted in Grillo breaking up with the RAI television company , he was also expelled from the number of guests of the San Remo festival in 1988 and 1989. At the end of 1993 he returned to the RAI with two monologues and achieved great success with his attacks on banks, politicians, the Italian way of life (in particular, consumerism ). Once Grillo joked that he would not take part in the elections, because people would vote for him, and he was a supporter of the dictatorship ^[3] .

Politician

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Grillo spoke on the Telepiù commercial channel with “New Year’s appeals to the people”, which were broadcast immediately after the corresponding appeals of the Presidents of the Republic ( Scalfaro and then Champi ). In 2007, he organized on the main square of Bologna (piazza Maggiore) the so-called V-Day (meaning "Vaffa-Day" ) ^[5] with the participation of, according to various estimates, tens or hundreds of thousands of people, and in 2009 established it at the congress in the building of the Temero Smeraldo Theater in Milan, the Five Star Movement ^[3] , with which his further political activities are closely connected. The program of this organization is posted on Beppe Grillo's personal blog ^[6] . From the very beginning of the existence of the movement, statements were made about its radical difference from traditional parties, on the Grillo website it is defined as “free association of citizens” ^[7] .

Supporting the ceasefire agreement in eastern Ukraine on September 6, 2014, Grillo simultaneously expressed his opinion on the underlying causes of the conflict: he saw them in the desire of the United States, who had lost the opportunity to finance “their empire” without limit, but continued to operate within the framework of the “unipolar world” logic, to destroy the ties between Russia and Europe as a whole, but especially between Russia and Germany ^[8] .

On February 3, 2015, on the day the new President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella took office, Grillo ignored the invitation to the official ceremony, but posted on his blog congratulations and the following wishes to the head of state:

1. defend the Constitution ,
2. not to sign obviously unconstitutional acts proposed by the government,
3. use their powers to adopt legislation aimed at supporting the most vulnerable sectors of the population,
4. confirm the position of the Constitutional Court on the illegality of the current election law ,
5. counteract the “incestuous” ties between political parties and organized crime,
6. restore the leading position of parliament ,
7. express solidarity as head of state with the prosecutor ( pubblico ministero ) Palermo ,
8. to reorganize the public information system,
9. to meet at the end of the seven-year presidential term the same respect and enthusiasm that accompanied his election ^[9] .

Grillo maintains a personal blog ( beppegrillo.it ), which publishes materials on alternative energy, globalization and new technologies. Entries are available in three languages: Italian, English and Japanese. The Italian version is the most popular and each entry receives several thousand comments and feedback from readers. Grillo's blog is one of the ten most influential blogs on the entire world wide web ^[10] . The author often receives letters of support from prominent politicians and artists such as Antonio di Pietro (former minister in the government of Romano Prodi), Fausto Bertinotti , Renzo Piano , and even from Nobel laureates: Dario Fo , Joseph Stiglitz , Dalai Lama , Muhammad Eunice ^[11] .

Grillo has two children from Sonya’s first wife, daughter Luna and son David, from the second, Parvin Tajik - Rocco and Ciro (Parvin Tajik has two more children from a previous marriage). In football, Grillo is a fan of Sampdoria . When he began to use the slogan “get out of parliament”, he turned against himself, because on December 7, 1981 in the Valley of Piedmont ], while driving, he had an accident in which a family of friends died - her husband with his wife and their nine-year-old child; in 1988, was found guilty of manslaughter by a court of last resort ^[3] .

• Beppe Grillo. Tutto il Grillo che conta: dodici anni di monologhi, polemiche, censure . - Feltrinelli Editore, 2006 .-- 280 p. - ISBN 9788807490439 .
• Beppe Grillo. Schiavi moderni. Il precario nell'Italia delle meraviglie . - BeppeGrillo.it, 2007. - 309 p. - ISBN 9788890182693 .

• Federica De Maria, Edoardo Fleischner, Emilio Targia. Chi ha paura di Beppe Grillo? . - Selene, 2008 .-- 223 p. - ISBN 9788878940864 .
• Andrea Scanzi. Ve lo do io Beppe Grillo . - Edizioni Mondadori, 2012 .-- 400 p. - ISBN 9788852027604 .
• Paolo Crecchi, Giorgio Rinaldi. Beppe Grillo: la biografia non autorizzata del comico che ha fatto tremare la casta . - Aliberti, 2007 .-- 139 p.

• Il blog di Beppe Grillo (Italian) . Personal blog. Date of treatment August 4, 2014.
• Grillo, Bèppe (Italian) . Enciclopedie on line . Treccani Date of treatment August 4, 2014.
• Giorgio Dell'Arti, Massimo Parrini. Beppe Grillo (Italian) . Corriere della Sera: Cinquantamila Giorni (5 ottobre 2008). Date of treatment August 4, 2014.