Dany Mitzman tries to make the best of a dreaded family day out…at a football match.

Broadcast on the BBC, From Our Own Correspondent, on 25/05/2019
Link to the original episode here

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Burping is a socially unacceptable habit in many cultures. But each year, crowds flock to the Italian town of Reggiolo, to listen to belching in all its myriad forms. It’s a competition called Ruttosound, part of an annual beer festival – and for a good cause with contestants clearing their oesophagus’ to raise money for charity. I took a deep breath and checked it out.

Broadcast on Inside Europe, Deutsche Welle Radio, 4th August 2016

Click here for the original episode

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The day I visited the Willy Wonka of grappa production in Bassano del Grappa.

(first broadcast on From Our Own Correspondent, BBC Radio 4, 21st February, 2015)
Click here for original episode – 21 February 2015

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Click here for the audio version

When you live in a foreign country and delight in cultural differences, there can come a time when you discover that, in some tiny way, you’re beginning to adopt them yourself.

It’s usually something innocuous, like developing a taste for salt liquorice or taking your tea with mint instead of milk. But mine? Well, it’s not exactly a deep, dark secret – more of a low-level luxury.

I have a passion for the bidet.

Whether you pronounce it the English way, to rhyme with D-Day, or the French way, as they do here, I’ve developed a dependence on it – just like a proper Italian. It’s something akin to our universal dependence on the mobile phone: “How did I ever manage without one?”

When I go back to the UK, I actually miss my bidet! Nowadays you can, of course, get those handy flushable wet wipes but, to my now spoilt derriere, that’s like craving hot roast potatoes and being forced to make do with a packet of crisps. Any Italians reading this will probably be nodding with vigorous empathy, shouting “Precisely!”, while the Brits will be pulling a face as if they’d just sniffed rotten eggs.

The thing is, if you’ve never used one, you can’t appreciate its sublime daily convenience. If you think about your kettle and then imagine not having it, that’s how people here feel about the bidet. When I was growing up in suburban London, my parents did actually have one. But, as I recall, they used it as a sort of “loo-side table” – a handy perch for a book or a spare toilet roll. Italians, on the other hand, use their bidets constantly.

Although invented, named, then largely abandoned by the French, they’ve become a symbol of Italian hygiene supremacy. There’s even a building law stating that every home must have one.

And it’s not just a practical thing, like those mini-hoses by the lavatory, popular in the Middle East, it’s a bathroom furnishing in its own right, and it’s dedicated to pampering your privates. It has a single mixer tap with a jet you can direct, and the accessories are equally thoughtful.

Italians aren’t big on face cloths but beside every bidet you’ll find a special little towel exclusively for bottom buffing. You’ll also find a bottle of “detergente intimo” – liquid soap that’s PH neutral to be gentle on your genitals. You’ll never see an aggressive anti-bacterial hand wash sitting on a bidet here. No, not in my bathroom either. “It may come as a surprise that in French bidet originally meant ‘a small horse’, ‘a nag’,” says Edmund Weiner, Deputy Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

“English travellers on the continent report riding bidets from the 17th to the 19th centuries (‘I trotted behind on a little bidet’, 1863).

“And of course it’s not difficult to see how the word was extended to the bathroom utensil: as Francis Grose put it in 1785: ‘A kind of tub, contrived for ladies to wash themselves, for which purpose they bestride it like a little French poney.'”

But having grown up – and survived – without one, I’m always amused by Italian reactions to the absence of bidets elsewhere. When I tell them we don’t have them in the UK, after pulling the rotten egg face, they ask me with genuine curiosity, “but how do you get clean down there? Do you shower every time you go?”

I’m also tickled by the horror they experience over improper use of the bidet by foreigners. One of my neighbours went on holiday to Venice with some Dutch friends. To her disgust, she found they’d turned the hotel bathroom bidet into a drinks cooler.

That’s not to say that Italians only use the bidet for getting clean “down under” – they’re just as likely as weary foreign tourists to soak their feet in it. One Italian friend who has lived in the US for 15 years tells me she misses the bidet every single day. “They’re so multifunctional,” she enthuses. “They also work for cleaning babies off, for rinsing the floor mop and, in a very busy household like the one I grew up in, with five people and one bathroom, even for peeing in, if the toilet was taken!”

I wonder if some Italian readers are now smiling sheepishly to themselves thinking “Phew! Glad to know I’m not the only one who’s ever done that.”

Published on 8th July 2014 in the BBC Online Magazine

Link to original episde – BBC online magazine 8 July 2014

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Everybody loves a singing nun, whether it’s Julie Andrews crooning in the Sound of Music or Whoopi Goldberg belting gospel in Sister Act. But now Italy has its own singing sister who became an overnight international star last week, thanks to her performance on The Voice of Italy.

(first broadcast on Inside Europe, Deutsche Welle Radio, 10th April 2014)

Link to original episode – Inside Europe 10 April 2014

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Both literally and figuratively one of Italy’s sweetest success stories, Nutella this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. Company legend has it that the first ever jar was consumed on May 18th 1964.

From the little town of Alba in north western Italy, the chocolate-hazelnut spread has grown in popularity to become a global phenomenon. Now produced in 11 factories worldwide, 5 of which are in the EU, 365 million kilos of it were sold last year.

From Parc de Sceaux in France to Gorky Park in Russia, millions of fans were celebrating its half century last weekend. There were special festivities in its home country, with a huge free concert featuring pop star, Mika, in Naples’ Piazza del Plebiscito.

(first broadcast on Inside Europe, Deutsche Welle Radio 23rd May, 2014)

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The people of Romagna prove that, even without crystalline waters, they can still attract the tourists.

(First broadcast on From Our Own Correspondent, BBC Radio 4, 25th August, 2012)

Link to original episode – From Our Own Correspondent, BBC Radio 4

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Here are some pictures to illustrate the obsessive focus of my interest in the run-up to the recent elections here in Italy. The idea for the article I wanted to write was this: to make a few sarcastic (or, ideally, funny) personal observations, but also to get a psychologist to comment on what the politician’s hair might say to the voters (inspire trust/distrust, affection/loathing, charisma/lack of, etc.). It would have been curious to see if these interpretations of the main contenders’ hair had actually reflected in the results. But this piece would have worked before the elections and, unfortunately, I was sick!

I have decided to post a few of my thoughts anyway…

Look at Berlusconi with his patently felt-tipped head. Does this tell voters he’s a dissembler and a fake? Can you trust a man who wants to give the impression of being something he’s not?

He has the head that Berlusconi would have if he were ‘honest’ about his hair loss. Does that mean Bersani inspires more trust? Does the voter think “what you see is what you get – this man is reliable”?

Bersani has the head that Berlusconi would have if he were ‘honest’ about his hair loss. Does that mean Bersani inspires more trust? Does the voter think “what you see is what you get – this man is reliable”?

Giannino has all the hair Berlusconi would like to have on his head…but on his face. Bald on top, ridiculously hairy around the mouth. What does this mean? (I have no idea but my psychologist might have had some). Does it show fearlessness? In the end, this guy really buggered up his (slim) chances by lying in his online CV that he had a Master’s degree which he didn’t have. How dumb is that?

His hair reminds me of my old Super Girls World – it just grows and grows. The more he ranted on his campaign trail, the wilder and bushier it seemed to become. The question I kept asking myself was: is he deliberately cultivating his luscious locks just to piss off Berlusconi? Like Loadsamoney used to flash his wad around, is Grillo perhaps shaking his mane at Berlusconi? And what did his abundance of hair say to voters in contrast with the dearth on his main rivals’ heads?

Now look at the man behind Grillo’s Five Star Movement, Gianroberto Casaleggio. He is the ideas man (the so-called guru) but rarely appears in public. He was on the news the other night and Andrea said “blimey, for a moment I thought that was John Lennon” (or the equivalent in Italian of ‘blimey’). He has even more and longer hair than his movement’s mouthpiece! So now they’ve won so many votes, I’m convinced there must be something in the hair connection, but I’m just not quite sure what as I never did contact a psychologist…

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I used to eat chicken and the odd bit of smoky bacon but, soon after I moved to Bologna, I gave up meat altogether. Thirteen years of often amusing reactions inspired me to write this piece.

(First broadast on From Our Own Correspondent, BBC Radio 4, 12th January 2013)

Link to original episode – From Our Own Correspondent, 12 January 2013

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Keratoconus is a change in the curve of the cornea. In the advanced stages, the disease can lead to severe sight loss and even blindness.

When I read a report that an Italian doctor had developed a new surgery-free treatment using a super-permeating solution of vitamin B2 eye drops, I thought it would make a great story for Deutsche Welle’s science programme. So did the producer. But things don’t always go as planned…

First broadcast on Spectrum, Deutsche Welle Radio, 30th July 2012

Link to original episode – Radio DW 30 July 2012

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