Early Career
After taking a degree in journalism in Genoa, he worked in theatre with Paolo Villaggio before joining the RAI – Italy's state radio and television corporation – as a radio announcer. In 1956, he first appeared on television and presented popular programmes such as Domenica Sportiva and Giochi senza frontiere. In 1969, he was fired by RAI when he described in an interview, the company's managers as a group of boy scouts trying to pilot a supersonic jet plane unsuccessfully. Subsequently, he worked for several private TV stations and various newspapers, before returning to RAI in 1977.
In 1977, Tortora started to present a groundbreaking transmission called Portobello, which attracted an audience of up to 26 million people every Friday night, far outperforming any other programme. Named after the famous Portobello Road market in London, the show allowed the audience, via telephone from home, to buy or sell things, present ideas or inventions, or look for a partner or someone they had not seen for years. The challenge for those participating in the studio was to get Portobello, the green parrot and mascot of the show, to say his name. He rarely did.
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