All it took was one stormy look from late broadcaster Angela D’Audney. That’s what forced Nicky Pellegrino to face her fear of public speaking – something that filled her with “complete horror” – and who the popular author credits for now having the ability to speak to hundreds of fans on her book tours.
Back in 2000, Angela had been diagnosed with an untreatable brain tumour. The TV newsreader knew she had limited time, so had asked Nicky to ghost-write her autobiography Angela: A Wonderful Life.
“But when it came to the book launch, she wasn’t well enough to stand up and talk to a crowd, so she said to me, ‘You’re going to have to speak,’” recalls Nicky, 60.
“I said, ‘There’s no way!’ And she gave me this look. Angela was quite a hot-headed woman, so I knew resistance was futile. But I almost wet myself, I was just so nervous!
“Often with these things, they’re not as bad as you think they’re going to be. I don’t know if I would’ve ever completed a novel if I hadn’t done her book first and then realised I was capable of it.
“I certainly wouldn’t be going around the country doing book events talking to all these people regularly!”
The night before the Weekly’s interview, Nicky had spoken to 200 people at Auckland’s Devonport Library to kick off a North Island tour for her latest heart-warming novel, Marry Me in Italy.
It was partly inspired by her parents’ own enduring love story – where they’ve been honest about how much patience and hard work a marriage takes.
“My parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last year and in her speech, my mother Sylvia toasted, ‘Here’s to 60 years of incompatibility!’” laughs Nicky. “Because they’ve had this incredibly turbulent relationship.
“My dad Dino, 86, is Italian and very fiery. My mother’s English, so she bears a grudge. But then they’re really sweet together. Recently, Mum, 88, was telling me she wasn’t sleeping well, so I suggested she sleep in the spare room. She replied, ‘No, I can’t do that. Your father likes to hold my hand as we fall asleep.’”
The couple met when Sylvia and her girlfriends decided to hitchhike across Europe to live in Italy.
It was the 1950s. They found a place to live but noticed that the washing lines were full of fancy lingerie. Naïvely, they soon realised all the other women living there were prostitutes.
“One night, they went to the Via Veneto [one of the most famous and expensive shopping streets in Rome]. They didn’t realise that in Italy, if you sit down at a table, it’s more expensive than if you stand at the bar.
“So they sat down at a table to order drinks. And my father – who was very handsome in his military uniform – walked past with his friends looking for rich tourists. He saw my mum, assumed she was wealthy and said, ‘Hello, beautiful lady. Can I talk to you?’”
That was the start of their big romance. After getting married at a registry office in Italy, the pair decided to live in Liverpool, where Nicky was born a year later.
She fondly remembers childhood summers spent in southern Italy, staying with aunties, sleeping on the floor in a tiny apartment and enjoying the flavoursome food her aunts had made.
“My brothers and I were really tall, with bright red hair and very pale, so we looked like aliens who had landed! We would eat pasta al forno and schnitzel all day in a cabin on the beach.”
This is where the best-selling author’s 15 fiction books – often about food, love and set in Italy – began to form as she noted the raucous fun of family gatherings.
“I’m very much writing about middle-aged women now too,” she says. “When you’re younger, you don’t really imagine yourself in mid-life as still being ambitious or adventurous. Then when you reach that age, you realise you’re still the same – just a bit creakier!”
Quick fire
You met Angela after interviewing her for Weekly stories. Was it an instant connection?
She had poodles and so did I, so we had a poodley bond. Angela was a tremendously loyal, kind person who had a temper. She was part-Brazilian and did this thing where she’d fly off the handle and then instantly get over it. I was used to my Italian father being like that, so it wasn’t off-putting at all.
What is the food of love?
Artichokes. When they’re steamed, you pull the layers off and eat the little bit in the middle that looks like a heart – it’s delicious. Artichokes are hard work, like relationships, but they’re really worth it.
Does your father cook?
When he married Mum and moved to England, he asked his sisters to send recipes and he taught himself to cook from those. When I went back to visit my parents in June, he wouldn’t let me in the kitchen at all.
Share a fun fact:
My husband’s name Carne means “meat” in Italian. My family find that so amusing!
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