Pippo Baudo, the TV giant, has died at 89. From Sanremo to Fantastico, he made entertainment history.

Giuseppe Raimondo Vittorio Baudo , but for everyone he had always been just Pippo Baudo , or simply Pippo for his key role in the history of Italian television.

He died on Saturday 16 August at the age of 89 at the Campus Biomedico in Rome, “surrounded by the affection of his loved ones”, one of the most iconic faces of Italian television together with Mike Bongiorno , a TV presenter par excellence capable of navigating the many changes in the country and television with his unmistakable style.

Since the 1960s, Baudo has been a protagonist of Italian popular culture, presenting, among other things, thirteen editions of the Sanremo Festival , an undisputed record, but also hosting other historic Rai programmes such as Canzonissima, Domenica In, Fantastico , and working for a short period also for Mediaset .

A Sicilian from Militello in Val di Catania, Baudo (like his father) abandoned a potential career as a lawyer due to his talent as an entertainer and presenter, soon landing a job on RAI radio and television broadcasts in Southern Italy and then in Milan. In 1968, he made his debut as host of the Sanremo Music Festival, Italy's most important music festival, which he would host 12 more times, often also serving as artistic director, with his final appearance in 2008 alongside Piero Chiambretti.

It launched famous comedians and actors such as Fiorello, Beppe Grillo, Roberto Benigni, Lorella Cuccarini , as well as helping to make dozens of singers known to the general public: among them Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti, Massimo Ranieri, Al Bano, Anna Oxa, Andrea Bocelli .

The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella , also remembered Baudo with a statement in which he expressed his "saddened" nature by his death and called him a "protagonist and innovator of television," emphasizing his "professionalism, culture, grace , and extraordinary ability to interpret the tastes and expectations of Italian viewers." In 2021, Mattarella awarded Baudo the title of Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

Baudo had five partners and two children . With Mirella Adinolfi he had Alessandro, born in 1962 and recognised by the presenter in 1996 after a brief legal dispute, while in 1970 from his marriage to Angela Lippi (1944) he had Tiziana, his secretary and assistant.

After a seven-year relationship with Alida Chelli and a shorter one with Adriana Russo , on 18 January 1986 Baudo married the opera singer Katia Ricciarelli , from whom he separated in 2004 and then divorced in 2007.