I have known Francesco - Franco - Dammicco since the mid-1980s. At the time, he was working for the Manifesto, which was the newspaper that hosted the first Gambero Rosso-branded inserts. Today, having concluded his decades-long relationship with GR, he joins DoctorWine as a sales consultant.
Francesco Dammicco, whom I have always called Franco, was for more than 30 years the commercial director of the Gambero Rosso. Even before 1991, when he joined the team, mainly Stefano Bonilli, but also I, knew him well.
The reason is simple, he, since the 1970s, worked for llManifesto and was in charge of distributing the newspaper and books of the publishing house. The office was on Via Ripetta, 66 in Rome, and hosted Stefano and me in its offices to make the first inserts of the Red Prawn, which came out starting December 16, 1986 within that very newspaper. He assigned a small desk to Bonilli, where almost only the telephone came in, while the typewriter sat on a small table that had no chair in front of it, and to write we sat on a stack of Yellow Pages.
Memories of an important beginning
The first numbers were written that way, and there was still the printing press and light tables on which pages were created with the articles composed by the linotypists and literally “put on the page” that way. Franco sometimes observed us with pity, especially when we had to stay late in the evening to complete the work, perhaps only the day before we left because some contributor had delivered the article late.
We have known each other since then and we have worked together for many years. So when I learned that his decades-long journey at the Red Prawn was finished, I called him and asked him if by any chance he didn’t feel like putting together an old partnership. He replied that he would think about it, and after a couple of days we met, with my wife Marina Thompson present as A.D. of our small company.
A renewed old partnership
The fellowship has been reconstituted, we started working together again, and, at least to me, it seemed that we had stopped just the day before. Franco will work with Paola Bacchetti, who is our sales director, as a consultant, bringing a wealth of contacts and experience that has few equals in this world of ours. Personally, I am very happy. I found an old friend, many memories and a way to consolidate and improve the work that the entire DoctorWine has carried out in recent years, with new initiatives and new goals to be achieved. That’s okay.
