Armando, how did it all begin? You went to London in 1966, I think.

Yes. It was June 11th 1966, a Saturday. I finished my National Service in Italy March 10 and I spent the next three months writing to engineering companies in England because I was set to move there with a one-way ticket. In Rome I was working for an American firm developing new towns in Libya, a job that I had before going for my national service. Before that I worked ad a draughtsman for SDD, the Italian company that was building the Autostrada from Messina to Catania. While at SDD I got my ‘Geometra’ degree studying at Istituto Fevola, at nights, with great teachers. I got my 5 years degree in 2 and in doing so I caught up with all my teenager friends who have been spending their teens just going to school and getting bored. I wrote to maybe 30 companies in London answering newspaper adverts in the London Times that I would find in the paper kiosk in Via Veneto, just in front of the Excelsior hotel and a stone thrown from the American Embassy.  It was fantastic because most of them answered and maybe ten of them actually wrote: “When you come to England, come and see us.”