Radio provocateur in Easter clash with “nazi-vegans”

Giuseppe Cruciani live on air with dead rabbit

 Rome -- Italy’s most abrasive radio show host narrowly missed coming to blows with animal rights activists angry at the country’s slaughter of spring lambs for traditional Easter lunches, and at Giuseppe Cruciani’s provocative insensitivity on the subject.

 Mr Cruciani, an emulator of feisty American talk radio hosts and described as “an illegitimate son of David Letterman,” has delighted in twisting the tail of Italian vegetarians.

 On one occasion he presented a skinned, dead rabbit on his radio show and proceeded to have it cooked while on air, posting photographs of the event on Facebook.

 In the run-up to Easter he brought a live lamb into the studio, announced he would be adopting it, was naming it Zanzarina (after his radio show La Zanzara – The Mosquito), and would be eating it in September.

 “I wanted to see if a live lamb would make me go soft, and the answer is no,” Mr Cruciani told listeners. “People who eat meat mustn’t be hypocrites and mustn’t allow themselves to be moved to pity by the live lamb.”

 He has often clashed with Daniela Martani, a former Alitalia hostess and campaigning vegan, telling her during a TV debate: “Kill yourself in the name of the lambs. Have yourself butchered in their place.”

 On Good Friday a group of animal rights campaigners gathered under the offices of La Zanzara in Milan, challenging Mr Cruciani to come down and confront them and eventually bursting into the radio station’s foyer.

 After brandishing a large salame in their direction, Mr Cruciani decided that the better part of valour was to hightail it back to his office and call the police.

 A blogger for Il Fatto Quotidiano newspaper, Maurizio Martucci, said he had been cast for once in the unusual role of prey, or frightened rabbit. “He ran for his life, chased by an angry blonde female activist who wasn’t even armed with a large-leafed vegetable.”

 Mr Cruciani thrives on controversy and admirers have defended him as a victim of “nazi-vegans”.

 His show, broadcast in the late afternoon as commuters drive home from work, has specialised in pushing back the boundaries of good taste. Bodily functions, sexuality in all its forms and voice imitators fishing for sensitive political or personal revelations have been the stock-in-trade of La Zanzara’s “cabaradio” – the fusion of news radio and slapstick cabaret.

 Among the memorable impersonations broadcast on the show were conversations involving pretend versions of Matteo Renzi, Puglia Governor Nichi Vendola and the astrophysicist Margherita Hack. The hoaxes were reined in, however, after a Milan court ruled that the public interest in the information acquired by the hoaxers did not justify the deceptions involved.

 His employers, the conservative-minded Italian industrialists’ confederation, are apparently unhappy with the fit between the raucous La Zanzara and their staid newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian equivalent of the Financial Times.

 A report for Confindustria by three media experts recommended “the immediate abandonment of broadcasts that are not coherent with the values of the system” – widely interpreted as a reference to Mr Cruciani’s show.

 His dismissal would inevitably spark a row over freedom of speech, however welcome it might be for vegans.

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Controversial radio host Giuseppe Cruciani