An Apulian Bachelor

Beppi Marra – an old fox. Personally I prefer an old fox, a dark horse, a crocodile to the man who slaps his chest while insisting that ‘we’re all brothers’. Then there’s his avarice. He used to rent out his threshing floor so that his chickens could peck at other people’s barley. And, of course, a colossal saving, he never married. ‘My brother died and I had to look after his kids,’ he says with a trace of a simper.