Take any Maltese male in his 60s or 70s, mention 'Colpo Grosso' to him ... and watch his face light up.

That's the name of a TV series, identified with host Umberto Smaila, which for five years from 1987 onwards entertained mostly male voyeurs with what we would today class as tame porn at around midnight on Italia 7. 

It was a show centred on striptease but did not venture any further than the breasts.

What many of us don't know is the story of how this series not only titillated the mostly male voyeurs and kept them awake but also helped, quite unconsciously, in pulling down Mintoff's and Wistin Abela's dream of a 'Socialist' generation.

There were two opposing currents or movements. Here in Malta the colonial Rediffusion, plus the smaller BFBS, had been wrested away from colonial hands by a Mintoff-backed sit-in occupation by Rediffusion employees and quickly turned the stations into mouthpieces of the government on the Pravda model.

In Italy, on the contrary, the Berlusconi government, obviously in its own interest, with its network of private television stations, was moving in the direction of liberalisation.

In Malta the bigger loser of the Rediffusion sit-in was not the colonial ruler but a tight group led by media priest Fr Charles Vella, of Cana movement fame.

Focused around the popular and rather liberal TV religious programme Djalogu, this Vella group was the undeclared but very real target of the sit-in leaders. They were immediately unceremoniously shunted aside.

Fr Charles was not prepared to take this lying down. He was to move away from Malta and found employment with 'Famiglia Cristiana', big in publishing and especially CISF, family-oriented.

But he still wanted to get back into the Maltese broadcasting scene. He thought Berlusconi's 'apertura' was a God-sent opportunity.

He thus got in touch with the Bishop of Ragusa and offered to set up a radio station, providing it with technical expertise as well as advertising.

Just when he thought he had it all stitched up, he took the whole project to Archbishop Guzeppi Mercieca .... and got the proverbial cold shoulder. The archbishop was not about to risk drawing Mintoff's proverbial ire on his head.

Where does 'Colpo Grosso' come in, you might ask.

Independently, other Nationalist leaders were busy experimenting. 

One such initiative, which I do not think has been sufficiently studied, involved hiding of transmitters in the backs of cars and broadcasting from hidden fields.

It was a cat-and-mouse game and the risks were high.

Other PN leaders tried other tactics. One of them was Censu Tabone, who was later to become President.

He or who for him sent off a TV advert to appear on a private Sicilian TV station but the people he sent it to made a mess of things and broadcast it in the middle of titties galore on 'Colpo Grosso'.

This caused a nuclear explosion in Malta (It's amazing how many people were still awake at that hour). Poor Censu, devout Catholic and church-goer, was shocked beyond words.

Party leader Eddie Fenech Adami then stepped in. He stopped all unauthorised experiments - the party was to have one and only one initiative in the media from Sicily.

Since Archbishop Mercieca was not interested, the party would do it by itself.

Eddie sent for Richard Muscat. The rest, as they say, is history now.

As I wrote in last week's book review, there must have been a hidden strategist behind the Studio Rama venture which was to blow a hole in Mintoff's and Wistin's plans for a Socialist generation. We now know it was Fr Charles but even he probably never understood the importance of his venture. 

It not only brought in pluralism of a sort in broadcasting but also led to the toppling of a Labour government that otherwise looked set to become permanent.

History note

"Dhalna Madrid" - The Spanish Civil War as viewed from Malta

The Spanish Civil War, involving a Republican government backed by the Soviet Union and international volunteers versus Nationalist rebels supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, significantly influenced global perceptions through modern propaganda techniques.

This paper by Giorgio Peresso appeared in the Proceedings of the History Week of 2013 and examines how the conflict was reported on the Maltese media during a period marked by its own politico-religious tensions, including King Alfonso XIII's departure from Spain and the involvement of the Maltese church in local politics.

The title of course refers to Herbert Ganado's banner heading on the Lehen is-Sewwa that he edited when the Nationalist forces entered Madrid.

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