Mama Mia Ms Macari
Dubliner Alessia is in line to win Italy’s Celebrity Big Brother. Her mother tells how it all started on The Late Late Toy Show aged six
DUBLIN model Alessia Macari is on the cusp of winning Italy’s biggest reality TV show, and it all started on The Late Late Toy Show.
The 23-year-old, whose mother is a cousin of Irish reality TV star Virginia Macari, moved to the land of her forebears three years ago and is now a celebrity.
‘It was a sad break-up but she’ll get over him’
Tomorrow night, she will find out if she will win Italian Celebrity Big Brother (Grande Fratello VIP), with a prize of €100,000.
It’s a long way from her family roots in the chipper business.
Alessia’s mother Lisa Borza has told the Irish Mail on Sunday how proud she was of her daughter. Speaking from the family’s Mona Lisa chipper in Crumlin, Dublin, revealed that Alessia had her first taste of life in front of the cameras at the tender age of six with Pat Kenny on the Late Late Toy Show.
Lisa said: ‘She always wanted to be an entertainer. She was on the Toy Show in 2000 demonstrating a Britney Spears doll. Then Pat asked her to sing a Britney song. Britney was one of her big inspirations. She was on the Michael Barrymore show when she was 10. She was also on The Den as she won a competition to meet Justin Timberlake.’ She made her name in Italy by landing a role on a nightly TV quiz show there.
But she revealed it has not all been magnifico for Alessia along the way. She told of her daughter’s broken heart after she spilt from Ireland footballer Ciaran Clarke.
‘It was a sad break-up, not a bad break up,’ she said, ‘They are still friends and they talk a lot.’
Shortly before her move to Italy, the former Presentation Terenure student appeared on RTÉ 2 reality show Away With A Stranger, on which she went on holiday abroad with a group of strangers.
Lisa said her cousin Virginia Macari had given Alessia advice occasionally but they had not seen much of each other recently.
Lisa is flying to Rome today for a reunion when her daughter emerges from the Big Brother house. Having got 39% of the public vote last week, she is many people’s favourite to win.