Leader? I’m the not the leader of anything. I don’t want to be the leader of anything. You don’t get out of it! Here, it’s not a matter of reform. Here what’s needed is a revolution. Revolution is a word that makes me frightened just to say it. But a true revolution, a revolution to sit down there and say what are these words, what do we have to produce. It’s not possible to make cars. This is a capitalism that incorporates everything. You want to make blades for wind turbines, for geothermal power, photovoltaic panels when it’s always the same ones producing them! It’s a system that has to be changed. Sitting down and starting to send all this lot away.

How incredible is Italy seen from the outside

Andrea Bonini: “There’s a lot of discussion about how Italy is seen from abroad and to what extent our country is more or less ahead or more or less behind in relation to the other European countries. There are those who have been to see it and to measure it in person, meeting the common folk but also Ministers, scientists, professionals, academics, we are talking about Beppe Grillo, recently returned from London and from a true European tour in the main cities of the old continent to talk about and discover Italy seen from abroad. And what they think of us abroad. Beppe Grillo is live from Marina di Bibbona. Good evening. What image of Italy did you find in your foreign tour?”

Beppe Grillo: “I did this tour of London, Paris and Brussels going round to tell people a bit of what could happen to those countries if the Italian virus is catching, so I went to London, I was received, an extraordinary welcome, the BBC, the university, Oxford, just think a bit of difference that there is between us and the English, for example, the Minister of Energy received me, a really kind lady, we do an interview, at the end of the interview, she turned to the interpreter and said: ask Signor Grillo if he has another 5 minutes of his precious time to give me, a Minister that says this, I couldn’t believe it I went mad and I said: I don’t have 5 minutes, Minister, I just have 3 at the most!
I thought of that as a joke, but she took me seriously and said: OK then3 minutes is OK! So we did the interview and then I went out and I had a rented car, a dark blue limousine and she went away on a bicycle. This is one of the tiny things.”
Andrea Bonini: “You’ve talked about the virus of Italy. What is the virus of our country?
Beppe Grillo: "The virus is a tremendous one, it’s a virus … we have taught the strategy of the pimp to anyone, we have invented the banks, fascism, they have always taken the piss out of us, but they are doing irreparable damage. Sarkozy has been in Italy a bit, after that he went back to France and he wanted to make his son the President of the Public Administration. Who did he get that from? Ministers like the Hungarian, in the villa, I won’t say whose villa, in Sardinia, topolanec, he had never gone around nude even at home, I’ve spoken to his wife, we haven’t even seen him, my husband, even in his underpants, not even my children have seen him in his underpants, he was nude in all the magazines, we do mad damage like this and there are already strange things. Just watch out what will happen, you’ll perhaps get Merkel discovered with a trans, this type of thing. I’ve been around a bit, looking, then the most moving things are the young people there, graduated with “110 e lode” {more than first class honours} at university, you go to Oxford and the one teaching English philology is a lady from Naples. We have such extraordinary potential that … they look at you with a veil of sadness, because it would be enough to sweep away this rubbish that we have as politics, as economy, change this system, at least have a try, to give a light, everyone would go back immediately. This is a country with such extraordinary potential that they are emigrating.”

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