"It was the winter of 1956 — I was six years old and had started school — I caught, like my cousin who was in class with me, what was then called 'whooping cough' (now known as pertussis), because when coughing, it made a kind of strange braying noise. My first little brother had just been born and my parents, to avoid infecting him, decided to send me to Rapallo, in Liguria. Uncle Franco had provided us with a car and driver! It was a Fiat 1400: not bad at all! I, who played all the time with toy cars, was thrilled."