My Fun, Strange Adventures with Fabio

How I helped the long-haired, bare-chested model leap from the cover of romance novels to the cover of People Magazine

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 In 1993, I spent a week in L.A. and Hawaii with Fabio Lanzoni, "The King of Romance," as I wrote a People cover story, then I ghostwrote his official biography. Now, for the first time, I'm sharing my never-heard interview tapes with revelations about cheating on his one true love, losing his virginity, and the upsetting experience that led him to utter an expletive. I also share the surprising tale of Peter Paul, the brilliant promoter who supercharged Fabio's career – without revealing his previous felonies.

Listen in as Sarah Wendell, host of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, makes sense of Fabio's past, then helps me review his later achievements, including 22 years as a pitchman for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, his collision with a goose, and his extreme political shift.

What should I do with the stuff I saved from my time with Fabio? It takes an expert on love and romance to solve that problem.

See my treasures, and sign up for reminders about future episodes, at throwitoutpodcast.com

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Transcript

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I Couldn't Throw It Out, Season 3,Episode 40
My Fun, Strange Adventures with Fabio, The King of Romance

Michael Small
On this episode of I Couldn't Throw It Out, you will hear details you never knew about a world-famous celebrity. It's a tale that involves romance, egg-white omelettes, a collision with a goose, three prison sentences, Marvel Comics, a whoopee cushion, and, of course, a loss of virginity:

[interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
How old were you when you lost your virginity?

Fabio
15. And she was 18. And I was ready. I was ready because I make the first move. 

[interview excerpt ends]
 
Somehow I think you might be ready to hear more from this guy.  So keep listening...

[Song excerpt begins]

I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout
Before I turned to dust I've got to throw it out

[Song excerpt ends]

Michael Small 
Hello and welcome to I Couldn't Throw It Out, the podcast where we tell the stories behind the treasures we've saved forever and then try to throw them out. In today's episode, we're going to explore my first-person experiences with someone who left what you might call an indelible dent in modern pop culture. All I have to do is mention his first name and everyone knows exactly who he is.  I am assuming that you're going to have some kind of reaction when I confess that in 1993 I spent one week in Los Angeles and Maui with the long-haired muscle man known as Fabio.

Sarah Wendell 
And my reaction is, please tell me every single thing that happened because I want to know.

Michael Small
Well, you could tell I have a friend here to help me and I am feeling very, very lucky that she's here because she has been writing and speaking about romance novels in a truly enlightening way. She launched the very popular podcast that is called Smart Podcast Trashy Books.She is also the author of the 2011 book, Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels, and the co-author of 2009's Beyond Heaving Bosoms, The Smart Bitch's Guide to Romance Novels. 

Sarah Wendell
The bosoms.

Michael Small
⁓
So welcome Sarah Wendell.

Sarah Wendell
Thank you so much for having me. I am deeply excited to be here.

People Magazine Cover Story

Michael Small
Let's go back to what was going on. I was with Fabio because I was writing a cover story for People Magazine.

Sarah Wendell  
I remember this cover story where Fabio is sort of standing three quarters towards you and the wind is blowing his hair and he's got like a real low cut tank top and his arms are folded and he's just sort of looking at you.

Michael Small 
That story was written by me. But I also don't mind telling you there was an official biography of Fabio, which lists the author as Fabio's then-manager, Peter Paul. Let the truth be told, That memorable 60 page tome, which consisted mostly of photographs, was ghostwritten by me. I have five remaining copies of this. And I am looking for ideas from you. who should get these copies and how they should be distributed. Because this is called, I Couldn't Throw It Out. And the idea is to give away or get rid of all the things that I saved from these two jobs, and I have a lot. It's all stacked right here. And I started looking up things on the internet, and what I found was kind of a shock. I expected this to be just a fun light story about Fabio's role as a romance novel cover boy.  

Sarah Wendell
Whatever Fabio's role is, yes.

Michael Small  
Or maybe it would be about his 22 years as a spokesman for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

Sarah Wendell
Wow.

Michael Small
We also have to remember his bloody 70 mile per hour collision with a goose at the opening of Apollo's Chariot roller coaster at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg. We will discuss that, but this all kind of pales compared to what else we have to discuss.

Sarah Wendell 
How does getting bonked in the face by a goose pale in comparison?

Fabio: Unexpected questions

Michael Small 
I have to say that a lot of unexpected questions came up when I started looking up things on the interweb, which remember, the internet did not exist when I reported the story on Fabio. That is a key point.

Sarah Wendell
Oh yes.

Michael Small
So the question is, how many lies and exaggerations did I believe during my time with Fabio?

Sarah Wendell
Oh no.

Michael Small
Another question. Why was Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee such a significant part of Fabio's story? I don't know if you know that he was, but he was. 

Sarah Wendell
No, I had no idea. ⁓ 

Michael Small 
How did all of us, including me, miss the fact that Fabio's manager was a convicted felon?

Sarah Wendell
⁓Oh boy.

Michael Small
And then, how did the gentle, kind Fabio that I spent time with become a political extremist on right- wing TV? 

Sarah Wendell
That part flummoxes me.

Michael Small
I definitely need your help with deciding what I'm going to do with all these things. I'm going to start with these six audio cassette tapes. They contain five hours and 30 minutes of interviews that I did for my cover story. Are you interested to hear some of what Fabio told me?

Sarah Wendell
What kind of a question is that? Honestly.

Michael Small
But I'm not going to start with that. I want to start with something that is probably more revealing.

Sarah Wendell
It's Fabio.  He didn't wear a shirt. How more revealing are you gonna get?

Michael Small  
This is revealing of character.

Sarah Wendell
Oh, all right.

Can Fabio Save Society?

Michael Small
Certainly more embarrassing for me. In 1993, I was based in San Francisco, but I often went to LA to report stories for People. I was full-time freelance, whatever that means. While I was there, I was asked to go talk to a guy named Peter Paul. He was serving as Fabio's manager,   and he was going to tell me why we needed to do a cover story about Fabio. So I get there and I meet this gruff guy with a gravelly voice who starts tossing all this baloney at me about love and romance and Fabio ushering in a brave new world of love or whatever. So I want to play you a little sample.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Peter Paul
Anything he does is gonna emanate from in some fashion his philosophy. His idea is if he brings more love, romance and fantasy into the culture, the culture is better off than if he doesn't do that. And that we can all be better people in a better society if  there's more room for that than there is graphic violence and sexuality.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
Okay, reaction?

Sarah Wendell
Well, my first question is, where is the line of graphic sexuality as pertains to Fabio? I mean, certainly Fabio is never in extremely explicit material, but I mean, like I said, this man never had a shirt on and I have looked at many a romance cover with him on it. And I'm still a little baffled by how this is.. okay, this is his philosophy. All right, to make the world better with the presence of romance, I want to see how we get to Fabio being the presence of romance. That's the part where I'm curious. 

The Funny Thing About Fabio⁓

Michael Small 
I do think it raises the question, did Fabio improve society? Anyway, all that sounded like hogwash to me and I just wanted to get out of there. But he kept droning on. I think I was actually rolling my eyes until he said something so outrageous that I started to laugh. And that was the turning point -- because Peter Paul, no matter what else he did in his life, I'm telling you, he was an absolutely brilliant promoter.

Sarah Wendell
I bet.

Michael Small
Instead of being annoyed, what did he do? You know what he did? He started laughing too.

Sarah Wendell
Oh, that's a smart dude. Like I know this sounds absolutely banana crackers. Just keep with me.

Michael Small 
So I kept laughing. And he kept laughing and then I went back to the office and I said, This story is really funny let's go for it. So that is how Fabio got on the cover of People magazine.

Sarah Wendell
Okay.

Michael Small 
It's also  how I wrote a cover story that would be quoted more than any other words I will ever write in my lifetime.


Sarah Wendell
Congratulations.

Michael Small
Of course, I could never hope to have the impact that Fabio had by appearing on the cover of romance novels. And Peter Paul explained that to me. And I'd like to just share you a little bit more of what he said.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Peter Paul
But think about the impact of an individual whose image is etched in the minds and psyches of women when they are reading their fantasies, projecting innermost fantasies in the course of reading a book. Every time you pick it up, you see an image of a man. You open it up and you connect that image to this fantasy, and it's etched in your mind. This man has a unique relationship with this constituency in a way nobody's ever had in my opinion.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Romance Covers: Behind The Scenes

Sarah Wendell  
All right, I agree with him there. Although I would like to add a small piece of trivia. One of the reasons that I have been told that romance novels back in the day, this is the 80s and 90s, you know, big hair, bodices ripping, the grass is exhaling, Fabio's hair is perfect. One of the reasons romance novels look the way they do is because the appearance, what it looked like on the shelf was greatly influenced by book buyers for different regions and different places.  Like the book buyer for all the truck stops in Austin was a different guy from the book buyer from all of the drug stores in Colorado. They all had their own little book buyers for chains and regional markets. Now there's like three whole buyers in the whole country, but this used to be a much bigger field. All these people were men and they had a lot of input into what romance novels looked like. So all of these images of fantasy, well, that's why there's so much big hair. And big bosoms and they're like falling out of their dress. Like all of that was a result of men inputting what they wanted in the books to look like. So eventually if it works, keep doing it. So this is a very circular ouroboros of an argument that he is making there. However, he is right that Fabio is one of the most identifiable cover models that is no longer working in romance. That is not deniable. The man had giant square pectoral muscles and we saw them everywhere.

How Many Covers Feature Fabio?

Michael Small 
One of the things they told me again and again is that Fabio appeared at that time, 1993, on more romance novel covers than anyone else. But every time I tried to check this, the numbers kept shifting. We settled for People Magazine on 1300. That went in my article. But now on Fabio's official website at fabioinc.com, it says he was on 3,000 covers. Do you have a thought about a number that might be accurate?

Sarah Wendell 
⁓Oh, that seems like a lot of covers. I mean, 3,000?

Michael Small 
But I said 1,300? Is that possible?

Sarah Wendell
Yes, 1300 I would believe, especially because the process, if I remember correctly for the time, an artist would have a photo shoot of the models with the fans and the poses, and then they would take those photos and make oil paintings. What might've happened is that Fabio would do a cover shoot and then the artist would use those images on multiple different covers. Some of the images that he was creating for the photographer would then maybe turn into even more covers. So that's possible, but I don't think he showed up and posed 1,300 plus times.

Michael Small
Yeah.

Sarah Wendell
According to somebody on Reddit, Fabio did 466 book covers. So there you go, Fabs. It's 466. I don't know where this 3000 comes from. And I'm honestly more willing to believe somebody on Reddit than I am to believe fabioinc.com.

Michael Small
They said he sometimes did 16 cover shoots a day and I was trying to think... ⁓

Sarah Wendell
Yep.

Michael Small
Yup.

Romance Covers: Behind The Scenes

Sarah Wendell
Yeah, absolutely. So I interviewed a cover artist named Sharon Spiak. Shirley Green and Sharon Spiak were telling me this. They work together. Sharon is the photographer. Shirley was the artist, I believe.

And you basically bring in models to pose for these cover shoots. And it's very difficult work because, like podcasting, when you show up and you really haven't met someone before, but you automatically are engaging in a more in-depth, nuanced conversation, models have to pretend that they are super duper into each other in some of the most physically uncomfortable positions for posing. They sent me pictures and I made a video and there's one of these two models and they are in a bathtub. You ever get in like a regular size bathtub with another full size adult?

Michael Small
As a matter of fact, yes.

Sarah Wendell
There are too many knees, way too many knees, right? Like everyone tries this and is like, wow, this is not comfortable.

Michael Small
The spigot goes into your back.

Sarah Wendell
Yes. Someone's got a drain in a bad place. And like, you've got to act like you are in the most throws of the most passion because everything that is happening above the rim of the tub, no matter what your legs are doing, you have to look like you're super into it. And so they would bring in models and it'd be like, okay, first you're in the tub and then you're on the steps and now you're over here. And they would just shoot them in different costumes and it was a reference photo. So he could go in and shoot 16 different covers all in one day because it was much more economical to do it that way. So that's how you get to 16, because it'like, okay, show up and now you're a Viking. Okay, now you're a prince. Okay, now you're a pirate. How about a pirate? Yeah, let's do that. Like that's how that worked.

Michael Small 
That's wonderful, because now we found out something they told me was probably true.

Sarah Wendell 
The 16 covers in a day, totally buy it. 

Michael Small
His first cover on the front, believe, was in 1987. His last one was in 1993.

Sarah Wendell
The covers that I think he is most associated with are from Joanna Lindsay, who is a very famous romance author who passed away recently. I think my favorite of hers is Defy Not the Heart because he's sitting on like a purple flowering bush of some kind. The heroine has got like long dark hair and a really deep V red velvet gown. And he is wearing, I know there's supposed to be some kind of trouser ye oldie historical pants, he's wearing purple tights. He's wearing purple tights. I love the purple tights cover. I can't let it go.

Michael Small
Well, I can't say I blame you for any of that. Another question. They said his presence on the covers caused the books to sell more copies. Is there any proof of that? Do think that's true?

Sarah Wendell
Well, I don't know if you could fi nd proof of that because it would mean different publishers reporting all their money, all their numbers. If a Joanna Lindsay book with Fabio is compared to a Joanna Lindsay book without Fabio, well, is the Joanna Lindsay book with Fabio set in a more desirous time period. It's really hard to make that quantifiable. But I believe that it would be true for that period of time, for sure. 

Romance Novels and Rap Music

Michael Small
One thing we have already clearly established, and this is good to get things clear from the start, it is that I could be manipulated. And in case you need any more proof, I have another example. Before reporting this story, I just written a book about rap music. I went from rap music to Fabio. And I'm pretty sure that I never mentioned it to Peter Paul. Okay? That's a key point. Here's how he chose to describe romance novels to me because I didn't know much about them.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Peter Paul
The romance industry is to publishing as rap music is to music in that anybody can express themselves as an author in romance. It's a grassroots kind of activity that women have done on their own without formal training, just like rap music is a grassroots expression in music of attitudes by people who aren't professionally trained in music.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
Okay, have you ever heard romance novels compared to rap music before? 

Sarah Wendell
Never once in my entire life. 

Michael Small 
Do you think it's a coincidence that he made that comparison?

Sarah Wendell
If he did his homework, then no.

Michael Small
Of course he did his homework, he's Peter Paul!

Sarah Wendell
Yes, he did his homework. So he knew, yes, he knew exactly what references to make to you, I bet. Yeah. Ooh.

Fabio's Romantic Fantasy

Michael Small
It meant something to me. So I'm like buying in. He kept continuing for days to give me these high-brow explanations of Fabio's power. Like, I'd just pop it right into People Magazine if I heard it enough times.  But the question is, what did Fabio think? So I asked Fabio, and I'm going to play you what he said.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Fabio
The biggest thing people love and nobody will take away is fantasize. It's the best way we can go through life because especially in the modern day where everything is so ugly. War, rape, violence, AIDS, deadly disease. The only thing we still have it's the ch  eapest escape is the fantasy. Because I think in modern day people need more and more beautiful fantasy because reality is so ugly. We have economic crisis, have war going on all over the world, we have people killing each other. So what I'm saying is we need more healthy fantasy.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Well, first of all, all of those things you could have recorded that last week and it's all true.

Michael Small
That's what I thought, yeah. 

Sarah Wendell
Which is really not a great endorsement of his argument that we need more fantasy because the world is so ugly. Wow, okay, the world needs more fantasy because the world is ugly.

Michael Small
What's interesting is there's that darkness underneath it all. And this surfaces in his more recent phase.

Sarah Wendell
So maybe what he's actually unveiling without meaning to is the secret of his entire career. He is effectively doing what most marketers and influencers do now. He's talking about a problem that has everyone has had for the longest time, but the solution, the solution is Fabio.

Michael Small 
You took Fabio to another level.

Sarah Wendell
Listen, I'm happy to engage with whatever this man says as, and Mr. Paul at face value, but also in the larger context. There's so many contradictions in everything that he's saying. 

Michael Small
Yes. It's all about contradictions. To get to the heart of those contradictions, I had to spend some time with him.

Sarah Wendell:
Oh boy.

Michael Small
I booked myself into the Mondrian Hotel on the Sunset Strip, which was my favorite hotel when I was a reporter there. And I became what you might call Fabio's scrawny, balding shadow.

Sarah Wendell
Don't sell yourself short, man. You had a real good lexicon going with ya.

Fabio's Bachelor Pad

Michael Small
First we went to his bachelor pad that had a deck with a sweeping view over the Hollywood Hills. It looked like a hotel room. There was nothing personal in the whole place. And if you were a suspicious person, you might even suspect that that pad was rented just for a cover story in People magazine.

Sarah Wendell 
Listen, influencers rent whole houses to film content for a month. Absolutely you would rent a big old pad. I mean, do you remember the MTV show Cribs? Later it came out that a lot of these people who were taking you on tour on their house, it was a big old rented house. It wasn't even theirs.

Michael Small
Oh no. I had a few illusions left even after Fabio and now you've crashed one of the remaining ones.

Sarah Wendell
I'm sorry.

Michael Small
Anyway, I did my usual trick. I said I had to go to the bathroom and I snooped around. So right away next to his bed, I found two bottles of pills.  B6 and B12 vitamins.

Sarah Wendell 
Okay

Michael Small 
Yeah. He later told me that the B6 stops you from retaining water and the B12 gives you energy. In the bathroom I found many little bottles of shampoo and conditioner that you get on a plane. So if you save those you are like Fabio.

Sarah Wendell 
You  have answered a question that has long plagued me. I've been writing about romance since 2005. So it's been a minute and I have long wondered what exactly Fabio's hair conditioner regimen was because sometimes his hair is just long and flowing and silky and sometimes it is not. And now I know the answer is hotel bottles of shampoo and conditioner . Allegedly.

Michael Small
Yeah, allegedly

Sarah Wendell
Allegedly

Michael Small
I also found Tom's Natural Herbal Toothpaste and Edge Sensitive Skin Gel for shaving. 

Sarah Wendell
Good, gotta take care of your skin.

Michael Small
I don't think any of this has been reported in the press until this moment...

Sarah Wendell
Shocking.

Michael Small
And I am looking forward to checks from both companies. Under the edge of his bedspread, I noticed something interesting. Two female little tiny clogs. This was reported in People Magazine, but it's still a little unclear, like everything else in the apartment, were they put there for me to see? Or were they left there by a friend of Fabio's?

We won't know.

Sarah Wendell
Were there any other indications that the person who was wearing those clogs might have also been in the house? Or was it just the shoes?

Michael Small
Yeah.

Sarah Wendell
I just can't believe that A, this is a whole different world of freelance writing than it is right now, which excellent. And also it makes total sense to just go in his bathroom and go in the medicine cabinet and look under the bed. That makes total sense. And obviously they saw you coming if they had allegedly rented a house and put some clogs in there.

Michael Small
So this is very deep level of reporting that continued when we went to breakfast several days in a row at his favorite little dive on the Sunset Strip. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name it looked like a little shack on the Sunset Strip and he each day ate a five egg white mushroom omelet with cranberry juice and Evian water It's another endorsement.  Throwitoutpodcast@gmail.com is where Evian, please send the check.

Sarah Wendell
What diner is serving Evian?

Michael Small 
It was sort of a place that movie stars like to go. 

Sarah Wendell
Okay, so Evian on the menu makes total sense. Okay. Moving on.

Intimate Questions: Hair Care, Circumcision

Michael Small
I asked him about his hair. He told me he cut it every two months and got streaks every four months. But I am disturbed by my own lack of observation because his family later sent us photos of him as a young child and he is not a blonde.

Sarah Wendell
Well now.

Michael Small
He's not a blonde. And he never told me he dyed his hair. And I don't think you can go four months without re-dying it, can you?

Sarah Wendell
He's technically telling you the truth. He hasn't had his hair cut, but he may be having, you know, a biweekly color appointment.

Michael Small
Yeah. Then I got to the anatomical questions, which I'd like to share with you now because I feel like I owe you something valuable. So here we go.

Sarah Wendell
The anatomical secrets of Fabio. Let's go.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
Has anyone ever surprised you with a question? I know you were asked whether you were circumcised or not by Howard Stern.

Fabio
Yeah, I said, 'Howard, people in Europe don't. If you go I n Europe, you are abnormal.' Depends on how... from what kind of point of view you see. What's the difference you have if you have the skin or not the skin I mean you know my hey I am like Mother Nature made me. You know I didn't have any piece cut off from me, you know it's like this is how Mother Nature made me.

Michael Small
So you know it's like in almost every article somebody asks you basically how big your penis is.

Fabio
Yeah, it's a you know, and it's funny because you see we live in a society where everything is unfortunately, you see the media brainwashes. Sex, sex, sex, sex. That's why we don't have any more love and romance because everybody's thinking with sex, Sex is not everything. I mean, it's beautiful, you know, but there are other things in life. You can't always monopolize everything in one section. I mean, always, you know, sex, sex, sex, sex.

Michael Small
You believe that and yet every day you have people asking how big your penis is. You know, so it must be frustrating.

Fabio
But you know, I tell you the best way to answer is just to let their fantasy go. It's just, hey, know, what do you think? I don't know.

[End of interview excerpt]

Michael Small
I told you I'd make this worth your while.

Sarah Wendell
I get it. It's a really intrusive question. Like how big is your schlong? And it's a weird question because... do you think women ever asked him that question? Do you think a woman ever walked up to him and said, Fabio, tell me honestly, how long is your schlong? I need to know. I think these are men asking him these questions, which adds a very interesting context to it. Because if he's only being interviewed by men and these are men asking the question, that's a different dynamic. That's not, Oh Fabio, you look so good on the cover of my favorite book. And I'm so excited to meet you and talked about margarine. How big is your wiener? Like, no, I don't believe that women are doing that. I think that if a woman is coming onto Fabio, she just assumes that, you know, the length of the hair is an indicative of the length of all of the other things is my guess. But if it's men, and I think it is men asking him that question, that's a whole other context.

Michael Small 
Yeah, I didn't even think of it that way, but that's very helpful to know. And I was trying to keep things on a lofty level. So I had a good follow-up question, which I'd also like to share with you.

Sarah Wendell
I cannot wait.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
How old were you when you lost your virginity.

Fabio
15. And she was 18. And I was ready. I was ready because I make the first move. And now, you know, we just stop talking and we just started seeing each other, and I mean she was probably very far from beauty, you know, but I was attracted to her. I thought, you know, she had great personality.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
Yeah?

Sarah Wendell  
She wasn't very attractive. Somewhere out there is the woman who's like, but I was Fabio's first. And here he is like, yeah, she wasn't even that hot, man. But I was ready. I'm sure you were, sir.  It is so interesting that the questions about Fabio that are trying to sort of embrace his allure as this romantic figure are focused on his physical virility and his sexual history.

Michael Small
He said some nice things too.

Sarah Wendell
I'm glad to hear it.

Michael Small
And, you know, it is my fault for highlighting these things. 

Sarah Wendell
He's also ready to engage on that topic. You know what I mean? He's ready to tell you about the length of his wiener and his sexual history. And that is so fascinating. I mean, the nineties were a very different time.

[Interstitial begins]

Okay, a quick interruption.  It's true. The 90s were VERY different.  So were the 80s, and the 2000s. That's why people like me – and many of you -- saved so many treasures from those years. But before we have to throw it all out, we're sharing on this podcast the excellent stories about the things we saved. In my case, this includes 15 years of audio interviews with Stephen King, Led Zeppelin, 2Pac, Nicolas Cage and many others. My guests and I also share items close to our hearts, like stuffed animals, family histories, and letters we meant to save forever. As we try – and usually fail – to throw it all out, you don't want to miss the action, do you?  So check out our three years of episodes, and sign up to get updates when there's a new episode.  You can do this at Throwitoutpodcast.com. That's throwitoutpodcast.com.  Thank you for the support.  And now back to the tale of my time with Fabio… 

[Interstitial ends]

Michael Small
I think you've already summed up everywhere we're going for the rest of this podcast when you said the word contradictions. Contradictions meaning that I really enjoyed my time with Peter, Paul, and Fabio. And I liked them. I liked them. I'm sorry. I did. 

Sarah Wendell
Don't apologize for liking them. I'm having a great time and I wasn't even in the room. 

Fabio's Modeling Technique

Michael Small
I did even ask him a little bit about his job, which was modeling, as you know. So let me just share a little bit of what he said about that.

[Interview Excerpt Begins]

Fabio
The most direct contact we have to people is the eyes. What's the first thing you have: eye contact. So starting from there, from that point, what I do, I always try to have eye contact with the people. I always see behind the camera the person opening the calendar, the person opening the magazine, and look at a picture. And the first thing is I want to make sure my eyes look right into the person. So the first thing the person will do when you turn the page is to make eye contact with the picture.

Michael Small
Would you think differently if you're posing for Vogue and then you're posing for a romance novel cover?

Fabio
Definitely. For, you know, a magazine like Vogue and stuff you have to show like, you know, kind of sophisticated seduce look. When, you know, on romance cover you have to look like more passion and aggressive and more, you know, masculine.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Those are all very astute observations and it's very interesting to hear him talk about modeling from that perspective. Yes, you do need to make eye contact with the people if you are doing the kind of modeling work that he's talking about for calendars. Yes, of course, that makes total sense. When you are a good model, that's a really specific skill set that involves lot of self observation and observation about people. And clearly he's done that.

The Fans' Choice

Michael Small  
He also told me that he seemed to believe what Peter Paul kept saying, which is that he had a very powerful relationship with his audience through the romance novel covers. And here's something he said about that.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Fabio
You see, most of the celebrity and the people in Hollywood, they were choose from a director, or producer, or photographer or whatever. I was choose from millions of people. That's the difference. People choose me.  Wasn't a director, wasn't a producer, wasn't -- you know -- a photographer. Was people. People, they say, this is the man we want, this is our fantasy. So it's different. I didn't choose myself, you know, they choose me to be this fantasy.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
I think there's some truth to that, but I also think without Peter Paul, they might not have been choosing him to be their fantasy.

Sarah Wendell
That was definitely a two person team that worked very well together. One thing that occurred to me while he was talking, he said earlier that what he represents is the fantasy. And you know, you mentioned contradictions. Well, if he is the fantasy, then truth is irrelevant.

Fabio on God and Religion

Michael Small
Wow, I've got to live with that for a while, I don't know that everything was untrue, but truth was not a priority In terms of Fabio's life, he mentioned to me he has this gratitude for what happened to him and he had very particular thoughts about God Which I hope you can hear what he's saying he got softer when we talked about God. But I'm going to share that with you now.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Fabio
The most important thing to me, okay, in the world, is God. Because I always had a beautiful life, always had a great childhood Everything I ask him was given to me. That is almost my payback. I want to do something to really make a change, make a difference.

Michael Small
You mentioned God a couple times. Do you go to church or do you see yourself as a Catholic still?

Fabio
No, I don't believe in religion.

Michael Small
You believe in God, but you don't believe in religion.

Fabio
Yes, religion is made by people. Unfortunately, it's business.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Fair enough. This is in the 90s, right? He has also predicted the current detachment from organized religion in our society. This guy is very, very prescient.

Michael Small
Yeah. He is, and maybe not in all ways he intended, but yes. However, I think my largest contribution with this interview was getting Fabio to address the weirdest contradiction of all, which is that the King of Romance did not have a girlfriend. Which is not to say that he didn't have sex. Later on when he and I and a lot of other people went to Maui where he was being photographed for his pinup calendar, we both booked into the Ritz Carlton.

Sarah Wendell
Nice.

Michael Small
Being People Magazine reporter is not easy. Had to put up with hardship. After the night was done and we both went to our rooms at night, I considered it my duty to earn my salary and park myself in the hallway outside his door where I could not be seen. And at one point, a middle-aged woman who was dressed up like fancy, spangly, kinda. And clearly, had been drinking. Arrived at his door with a half-empty bottle in her hand. She banged on the door, yelling, Fabio, let me in. And I know that the door opened. I know she went in. I do not know what happened. Maybe nothing happened, but use your fantasy.  ⁓
Sarah Wendell 
Hey, look, she brought the liquor. She was being generous. Had half a bottle to share. I mean, sure.

Fabio on The Girlfriend He Lost

Michael Small
I   still wonder why was the King of Romance single. It's not clear to me. He  did ultimately discuss it with a lot of people. But there's some evidence that I was the first one to get a certain angle on it, because what he told me tends to get picked up by other places. So, here is the revelation.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
If my best friend was a woman who was hot for you, I would say "Don't go for him because he'll cheat on you." And what do you say to me when I say that?

Fabio
Well, you see, because people don't know me enough. You know, I know myself enough and I know if I fall in love with a person, I will not cheat on that person. And I think I know I can be faithful.

Michael Small
Have you had relationships where you were able to be faithful for a long time?

Fabio
Four years.

Michael Small
Four years?

Fabio
I was pretty faithful until... the end. Put it this way, okay, just to give you an example, I really like... my girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend. And it was a beautiful relationship. It was great. And I screw up. I screw up. Stupid. You know, I was stupid. I cheated on her. She found out and the relationship fell apart. And you see what I'm saying is when you miss respect for your partner. When something is broken, it's broken. You try to put it together. You try to, you know. But it's always you try to put together pieces. And it's very hard because I loved that girl and I loved her. And it was very hard because I'm looking back and I said, why I did? I ruined something beautiful for, you know, fooling around. That's why I'm not gonna make the same mistake twice.

Michael Small
You have a large opportunity to fool around.

Fabio
I understand. Most of the men that would love to be in my place. Their dream. Have all the women they want. And all I want is just one woman, a special one.

Michael Small
It's interesting that's all you want, but I'm not blind. I have ears, I have eyes. You've definitely had several women since, or at least two women, since I met you, and probably a lot more than that.

Fabio
Also, you have to understand, I was free. I didn't like anybody particularly.

Michael Small
With these women that you've slept with lately, I'm just curious. You said to me that honesty is very important to you. Do they understand from the start that you're just not interested in the relationship?

Fabio
I'm very honest with people. I'm very, very honest. I say very much what I feel.

Michael Small
Have you had any serious girlfriends since then? Not really.

Fabio
No. There is a woman in their interest now and I don't know what's gonna happen. She was getting close, she was afraid of me because she see me bigger than life. She's afraid of my reputation and...

Michael Small
She's a hope.

Fabio
I didn't kiss her yet.

Michael Small
You went out on two dates and you haven't kissed her yet?

Fabio
No.

Michael Small
Well that's interesting.

Fabio
Because I respect her.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
Okay, what do you think?

Sarah Wendell
I actually think he's very wise because if you are Fabio and you are in a relationship, who are you going to cheat with that isn't immediately going to be like, yo, guess who I hooked up with? You'll never believe it. Especially after we get out of the 90s into the social media era and the internet era. Back then, as I'm sure you recognize as a freelancer, back then, any entertainment media was controlled. Your publicist had a role. You were only gonna be in a certain number of publications and you had deals and agreements with these publications. Some celebrities always go to People. Some celebrities would go to InStyle or some other magazine. There was control. There were only a limited number of media outlets. Once you get to the celebrity gossip blogging area, that man had no privacy whatsoever. So I actually think it's really smart of him to be like, how can I cheat? I'm literally six feet tall and I'm Fabio. I cannot get away with that. There's no chance, even in the nineties. 

Michael Small
I read something recently from him He's still unmarried and he's still talking about that woman. And that seems to me odd. I mean, it's decades later.

Sarah Wendell  
Maybe he just hasn't met the perfect person, or maybe he's not interested because, being Fabio takes up a lot of time, right? It takes so much time to look like that. You have to spend so much time in the gym. You've just been so much time working on your appearance. What time do you have for casual dating? And again, you're Fabio. He is something that I like to call Target famous. He is so famous that he can't go to Target and not have people recognize him. Right? But he is also a target when he goes out because he's Fabio. You're going to recognize him because he is so singular. It would be really hard to date under those circumstances let alone meet somebody who is interested in "you" you and not the celebrity you.

Fabio Does Hollywood

Michael Small
And another thing in his favor is that he felt a responsibility every time he went out to be nice to fans. He signed many autographs every day. All I could observe was him being super nice to people. When we went out, he was a lot of fun. And we rode around LA in a limousine and then stopped at all these appointments that Peter Paul set up for us. At one point, we drove up to a studio lot.  Peter says there's someone that Fabio should meet. So a woman comes out, gets in the limo, sits there with us like in the parking lot. I remember she had very lively eyes and a lot of energy and she was a very appealing person. And I had no idea who she was, but we had a great time talking with her and then she got out and went back inside. And the next year she had a sitcom called Ellen and it was Ellen DeGeneres.

Sarah Wendell
My goodness.

Michael Small
Yeah, that was Life with Fabio.

Sarah Wendell
Ellen wanted to meet Fabio, sit in his limo, have a chat. Okay.

Michael Small
Yeah.  We also went to a taping of a talk show called John and Lisa with John Tesh and Leeza Gibbons So when we walk in, the energy increases. Fabio always had a line ready to get people in the romance mood. I wrote down that he said to Leeza, "I'm always envious of John because he's working with the sexiest, hottest woman in the industry." Which was probably not an accurate statement. Then he said to her, "If you weren't married, I'd be knocking on your door in a heartbeat." 

Sarah Wendell
⁓Oh, bless his little heart.

Michael Small
Yeah, I think he's probably used that line before, though.

Sarah Wendell
Well, I mean, that is the shtick of Fabio, right? Like he is a brand and a role and an icon and he has to hold that up every day. Sounds exhausting.

Michael Small
And everything was about sexual innuendo.  One of the stops, we met a photographer who had a special piece of jewelry. So Fabio said, I love your stone. She said, Isn't it wonderful? It protects me from virile men. And he replied, You need a bigger one.

Sarah Wendell 
Oh he's quick.

Michael Small (46:46)
I think it was at John and Leeza that I met Sally Kirkland. She was an award winning actress who died last year. She was a character. At one point, Fabio rubbed her leg and she said, You've got to stop. You're giving me an orgasm. And he said, She asked me to make love to her right in the studio. And she also, by the way, appeared in a comedy thing on TV after Saturday Night Live with Bobcat Goldthwait. It was called Live from Fabio's Pants. And the entire thing they performed inside a photo of Fabio's Pants. But anyway, Sally extended this to a People Magazine reporter. Maybe that wasn't the best choice of words. She pushed me up against the wall and whispered in my ear that if I'd mentioned her in People Magazine I could have a particular sexual favor. We had a strict rule at People against taking gifts so I declined. 

Sarah Wendell 
So this is you.

Michael Small 
Yes.

Sarah Wendell
Sally Kirkland allegedly offered you experiences in exchange for People Magazine. Wow.

Michael Small
You know, she was kidding around. That's what my life was like, getting pushed against the wall and offered things like that while I was with Fabio. Everything became sexualized. We went to a place called Club Tattoo, which Fabio said was his favorite night spot, but I had a very strong feeling that the owner of Club Tattoo was a client of Peter Paul. And we were double dipping. There was this extremely strange collection of celebrities there at an event in Fabio's honor that happened to take place while I was there.

Sarah Wendell
Very conveniently.

Michael Small
I don't think a young person would have recognized any of these names, and they'll probably be even less familiar now. But these are the people who had big fame at some point. I got quotes from all of them, of course. Actress Melissa Rivers. She told me, "Since his chest is larger than mine, I take any hints he can give me." Everybody had a sex talk. The novelist Sydney Sheldon referred to the romance novels that Fabio was writing because Fabio allegedly wrote several romance novels. And Sydney Sheldon said, "I don't like the competition. If he keeps writing, I'm going to start taking off my shirt." Everybody was a comedian.

Sarah Wendell
Everybody had a quote ready to go.  Are these all clients of Peter Paul?

Michael Small
I don't know. I don't think so. Then there was Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner, who is now Caitlyn Jenner. Was Bruce then. Rodney Dangerfield, who said, "We're both the same gender. That's about it." Of course Stan Lee founder of Marvel Comics was there. He was Peter Paul's friend. I kept seeing him at events I attended, and he will return to us later in this tale. I was most impressed that I met Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. She really was beautiful. 

Sarah Wendell
She was just luminous.

Michael Small
She was something else. She had an ironic take on things. She said, "It's the body, those ripples. It makes you want to reach out and see if it's real." We chatted for a while. And I was trying to act like I was her friend. And she was acting like, "People magazine reporter. I've talked to you. Go away." But I liked her the best of almost anybody I met. She's clever and wonderful. Everybody had a good time around him. Even his previous manager, who sued him for breaking a contract when he switched to Peter Paul, I called her and she said, "I would say nothing but wonderful things about him as a person." Then she went on to talk about the fact that there's a lawsuit and she feels like she was mistreated. But they resolved it. Fabio was nice to be around. And he worked hard to tell people the things they wanted to hear, the way he did with me. At one point, he was describing his family to me -- his Catholic wealthy Italian family. And he said, "You know, like Jewish family, we all want to be together." He and Peter Paul figured out my religion and there were many references to it, just like rap music.  But let's start up how he and Peter Paul got together. Which is, in 1991, when he was at the height of modeling for romance novels, Fabio had a dream of being a Marvel Comics superhero. He wanted to play Thor in a movie. This is something that I don't believe ever happened, but it was a dream.

Sarah Wendell
I mean, it's on brand.

Michael Small
His roommate at the time was Richard Franklin, and this is the person that Peter Paul credited, so that's why I'm talking about him. He was very famous for a 6,500 foot bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills that included a disco, a dancing studio with a pole, a casino room, and a cave grotto with a hot tub and a waterfall. Richard was a photographer. He used extreme colored lighting to create special effects. He never used Photoshop or anything and those images you cannot believe that they were done without some manipulation, but he somehow set them up so they look that way. Many of his photos at that time showed very beautiful women in extreme poses wearing minimal clothing and interesting lighting. I'm only bringing this up because Fabio's specialty became female fantasy, but his roommate at that time specialized, I would say, in male fantasy. Richard happened to be the son of a British corporate raider who was very wealthy and who knew Peter Paul. And Peter Paul knew Stan Lee of Marvel Comics. So Richard introduced Fabio and Peter.

Fabio: Many of Many Media

Michael Small
Peter decided Fabio didn't have the background to become an actor yet, so he would set him up in every type of media so he could not be ignored. Rhonda, the previous manager, already had Fabio doing a calendar. But Peter went in every other direction. You name it, they did it. He decided, first of all, that Fabio should record a CD, a musical CD called Fabio After Dark, one of the items that I have here. It includes songs by Dionne Warwick, Billy Ocean, Barry White. But in between the songs, Fabio talks about romance over background music. And Fabio even recorded a song called "When Somebody Loves Somebody." And I'm guessing you might like to hear just a few seconds of that, which is all I want to play you. So hold on.

[Song excerpt begins]

I couldn't get a good night's sleep
Thinking about this night
I guess I fell in love at first sight
Before I knew it she was right in front of me

[Song excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell 
I don't know if that counts as singing. I think he might be rapping.

Michael Small
⁓Yeah. Once again, Fabio was on the forefront.

Sarah Wendell
Spoken word poetry.

Michael Small
There you go. This is one thing that I may not be able to give away because my wife Cindy loves it so much, not necessarily for the romance -- but because if she ever needs to laugh it is there for her.
I called Peter and Fabio on this particular aspect of the humor. And here's what they had to say.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
Now I told Peter my honest opinion which is I think the record is kind of hokey.

Fabio
Listen, you think when you are in love you're the regular Michael?

Peter Paul
You act silly, right? You act corny. You call the girl funny names like baby and booboo.

Fabio
And honey. If you tape yourself when you're with your girlfriend and you listen, you say, "Oh my God. I'm an idiot! I sound like an idiot."

Michael Small
When you say that to me, I draw a conclusion that you have a little bit of sense of humor about playing the role of America or the world's romance hero.

Fabio
Listen, when you can make fun of yourself, it means you are the most secure person. The hardest thing is to make fun of yourself. You have to have some fun. This is the entertainment business. You cannot take yourself too seriously. Somebody who is playing Rambo, okay, you cannot go in a restaurant, public life and play Rambo. It is Rambo on a screen. You understand? I am Mr. Romance or whatever you call me in the public eye. But you know, of course, when I'm going around, I'm Fabio, you know, I'm a regular guy. There is some things the media, you know, build up around you.

Michael Small
You lead the media to it.

Fabio
Well, because I'm a very romantic person, you know, it's like I love romance. The biggest thing in my life is to find my twin soul. I tell you something, entertainment always sold fantasy to people because what the world will be without fantasy. We need escape from reality. I mean, people need desperately fantasy.

Michael Small
And you're selling 'em a good one.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
This is a pair of people who are masters at branding. Here's the thing that is so astonishing listening to the two of them talk. They are creating a meme. Fabio is like a meme. They are creating a meme in real time before memes were a thing.  

Michael Small
Along those lines, another key element was the Fabio phone line. 

Sarah Wendell
Oh yes, $1.99 a minute, baby. You get to hear Fabio's....

Michael Small
Yup. To hear him talk about different romantic  topics. Or you could leave a message and enter a contest to have Fabio call you back. Here's a little sample.

Oh, this is gonna make me cringe.

[Phone recording excerpt begins]

Fabio
Hi! This is Fabio live from the world of romance. Thank you for calling my Fabio hotline at 1-900-90Fabio.

Announcer
A dollar 99 per minute. Sponsored by Visionistics. You must be 18 or older. If you do not wish to incur these charges, please hang up now. If you are calling from a rotary phone, please hold on and you will hear Fabio's innermost views on romance, men and women, and much more.

Fabio
Please make your selection now.

Interviewer
Fabio, what kind of woman really attracts you?

Fabio
I love a woman that is sexy and gentle. Just the way she look at me can give me chills. I  think women are the most beautiful gift from God to a man. A woman that has charisma and sex appeal is very, very exciting to me.

[Phone recording excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell 
Well, okay, those are some words.

Michael Small
I put out a lot of $1.99s because I went and I clicked everything on there and taped all of them. That clicking in the background was me trying to type what he was saying for my notes.

Sarah Wendell
Transcribing Fabio at $1.99 a minute.

Michael Small
There was other stuff, too much even to list. There was the Fabio fitness books and Fabio fitness tapes. 

Sarah Wendell
Oh, the Fabio Fitness video is a gift. The outfits alone are so 90s. It's perfect.

Fabio: Grand Plans That Didn't Happen

Michael Small 
But you know, they had grand plans that did not all come to fruition. He was supposed to become a major film star, they kept talking along the lines of Errol Flynn, which did not happen. He was supposed to be part of a plan to name a US city the romance capital of America and build a romance mansion where Fabio would preside. And here are a few details about that.


[Interview excerpt begins]

Peter Paul
Everything he does emanates from love and romance.  Love is the most powerful force in the universe and romance is a fantasy and so why not provide a venue for this fantasy to be realized.

Michael Small
I know that the house is going to be I think you said imbued with his spirit or something will he be required to be there?

Peter Paul
Why not? He'll be visiting and there'll be a theater there once in a while he might perform there but generally the nature of performances will be romantic. Let's just focus on what's happening in our society that supports love and romance. Where do you go to get into that kind of a feeling? If you can create a little kind of a resort area that's based on a romance fantasy as opposed to a Disneyland or Universal Studios where adults can get together and feel romantic, why not?

Michael Small
When you talk about a project like this, you're talking about somebody making a huge investment.

Peter Paul
We've got the land, we have the developer.

Michael Small
The land's already been bought.

Peter Paul
The land is being put in by a joint venture partner. We have a developer who's very credible and acceptable and we have a good part of the initial investment cap. We have money. It's a question of how we're structuring the money.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell 
I'm sorry, what does it mean if the land is being put in? I want to know if there were city council meetings about this and are they recorded? Because I really want to listen to those.

Michael Small
There is no romance mansion. That didn't happen.

Sarah Wendell 
I just want to point something out. This is a bunch of men determining what is romantic and what is a woman's fantasy. I haven't heard them yet asking a woman about this. They are making a lot of assumptions about what women find as fantasy. 

Michael Small 
Peter did address that with me in saying like we are acting on the things we learned from women, the women who support Fabio. And they are hearing from some women, a bunch of women in their inner circle.

Sarah Wendell
So they're hearing from Fabio fans about what Fabio fans want from Fabio. And so they are the spokespeople for what's romantic fantasy.

Fabio-Mania

Michael Small
Yes, and even though some of the things didn't happen, all these things we discussed got Fabio on so many TV shows and in so many articles, and it got him a fan base that, you know, there's evidence that they existed. And here's one fan talking about what she witnessed.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Romance Conference Attendee
I've never seen grown women acting like this. And I'm not talking 20 years old. 70-year-old women running up and hanging on him, just to touch his shirt, whatever, and to pay money to pose with him so that they would dress up like they were in a romance novel. And he posed with him. I mean, I kept looking at this and thinking this has got to be the most bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
Fabio mania. One of the women who left a message on the phone line was Tina Jakes, who eventually helped create and run the Fabio fan club.

Sarah Wendell
I was gonna say I know that name.

Michael Small 
Yeah, and I loved talking with her. I thought she was really delightful. I want to play you a few things from her, if it's okay, but here's something she told me about their friendship.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Tina Jakes
I was talking to his manager on the phone one morning about the newsletter. He called in, got on the other line, he called me back and he and I ended up staying on the phone that morning two and a half hours.

Michael Small
What did you talk about?

Tina Jakes
Everything.

Michael Small
Romance?

Tina Jakes
Well, you name it, we talked about it. We talked about everything. When I came off that phone it was like I had known this person forever. After that we ended up talking on the phone daily, an hour, two hours at a time.

Michael Small
Daily?

Tina Jakes
Pretty much so. For how long? Several months.

Michael Small:
Jumping into his mind why do you think he needed to do that?

Tina Jakes.
Well, because it's... there's just like I said, he's got a certain magic about him, and there's a special rapport there. It's like it's like meeting somebody and feeling like you've known them for a long time when you knew them a long, time ago. I t's just a very special friendship. And it's where I feel almost like this man is my best friend. And if I've got a problem, I can call him up and say, Fabio, I've got a problem.

Michael Small
Have you ever done that?

Tina Jakes
Oh yeah.

Michael Small
Like what kind of problems have you discussed with them?

Tina Jakes
A little bit of everything. If I'm feeling, having a particularly bad day and I'm feeling down. When I met him, I weighed close to 260 pounds and I've lost close to 100 pounds since I met him.

Michael Small
Did you tell him that before you met him? Did he know?

Tina Jakes
How much I weighed?

Michael Small
Yeah.

Tina Jakes
No.

Michael Small
You never discussed that.

Tina Jakes
No, that wasn't anything that came into discussion. He didn't know how much I weighed till he actually saw me. And when I came back the first month after I met him, I lost 30 pounds. And he inspired her  to lose about 40.

Michael Small
Are you continuing to lose weight now?

Tina Jakes
Yeah I sure am. He inspired me to go into the gym. I work out two hours a day, five days a week.

Michael Small
You do?

Tina Jakes
Yeah.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Fabio is clearly such a charming individual. Like you mentioned it, that like hanging out with him is fun, that he's entertaining, that he wants to connect with you. He and his manager, they are born marketers. And the product is Fabio. It's really fascinating to listen to this huge, incredible collection of people  who are all like, yep, that's how he is. He's just the greatest guy who's ever existed and he's super personable and he's my personal friend. You're gonna have to be that charming if you wanna be Fabio. 

Michael Small
Yeah, and she did a great job of describing his charm in some ways as good as anybody. So I'm going to play you just a little more.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
How do you explain the Fabio phenomenon?

Tina Jakes
Fabio has got a very special magic about him that was last seen in the matinee idols of the 30s and 40s. It's something that you don't see in actors today, but he has that very special romantic magic to him that appeals to women. Fabio is very surprising. When I first met him, I had the preconceived notion because he was a good-looking man that there was going to be no substance. But once I met him, I found out that he was almost 100 % every bit like the heroes in the books. Very much a man. He is very polite. He's very respectful. And he knows how to treat a lady like a lady.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
While you're pondering that, I'm going to play one more woman who I met. There was some kind of romance conference that I went to. 

Sarah Wendell
It was probably either Romance Writers of America or maybe the Romantic Times Book Lovers Convention.

Michael Small 
I talked to a bunch of people there. I like this next comment too.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
Has he ever kissed you?

Romance conference attendee
On the cheek.  This cheek.

Michael Small
Does your husband have any...

Romance conference attendee
I'm very happy and my husband finds it all very amusing. I asked him once, You know, aren't you jealous? And he said, Of what, a guy that can't afford a shirt or a haircut?

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
Now, he wasn't universally loved, from what I understand. Peter Paul had arranged for Fabio to get this book deal for writing his own romance novels, which were actually ghostwritten. He  got a six-figure advance, and I think that some writers objected to that advance. How much might a romance author, even a famous one, earn from a particular book? Can they earn six figures?

Sarah Wendell 
A six figure advance for a major star, totally normal. I mean, there's seven figure deals sometimes even now. And I can see why that would cause people to be very put out that he's getting a six figure advance for writing, which is not one of his things to do. 

Michael Small
I asked him about the protest, and here's what he responded.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Fabio
Some of these women, they did it to get some publicity for themselves, and I don't blame them. One of the biggest protestor, her bestselling books, I was on the cover. So it's a funny funny situation. Of course there are always gonna be jealous people. More you go higher in life, more you gonna have some of the people they're gonna be jealous. But I am very comfortable with people because most of people like me. So I always look in a positive way. There's always going to be a few people jealous and there is nothing you can do to change these people. My best advice to them is to concentrate more, focusing more on their career and stop worrying what everybody else is doing.

Michael Small
You think they had a legitimate gripe? I mean, is it unfair that you got a bigger advance?

Fabio
Put it this way, there is many way  to go from point A to point B in life. Everybody has to work hard to go from one point to another in life. Nobody give you anything for free. It's not like you walk in the street and people throw money at you. You have to pay your dues. Okay, some people pay their dues in different fields. I pay my dues in my modeling field. Some other people pay their dues in their writing field.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell 
I can see his argument. Don't agree, but I can see his argument.

Michael Small
Anyway, it was a cogent response.

Sarah Wendell 
It is a cogent response, I agree. It's also, think about, you're an author, you're in a genre that makes money and it's popular, but it's always very deeply disrespected. How are you as an author gonna be able to compete with a book by Fabio? That's a really difficult position to be in for everyone involved. So I can understand people being pissed and I can understand his answer.  I don't know that modeling experience is the same as writing experience. I don't think those two are a one-to-one corollary,

Michael Small
I should have gone to modeling school and my writing career would have been, wow. In any case, part of People Magazine is I'm always asking, who can I talk to about you? And he told me about a friend named Amy who is a veterinarian that he met when he brought his dogs in. And they stayed friends. And I've recently seen other interviews, in the past 10 years anyway, where she was quoted again. She is just a friend and it's just interesting that Fabio with all his talk about women and love when you ask to talk to a friend, he sends you to a woman who is not a romantic partner. Here's what Amy had to say about him.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Amy
Fabio's very intelligent. He likes hanging around with people he can talk about things with. When the Gulf War was going on, we would talk about that. He was very, very well-informed. He used to watch the news a lot. We could talk about almost anything. He even enjoyed talking politics. When the presidential election was going on, we talked about that. It's amazing some people would think that, he's going to be such a jerk. He's not. He's very personable, most people really enjoy him.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Given these quotes and given the context in which you've offered them, he seems to be cultivating relationships with people that exist on an intellectual or conversational level. Like he just wants to talk to people about like what Tina Jakes said, we talk about everything. We talk about all the things. Like he's their gabbing buddy on the phone back when you had the headset receiver and you had your shoulder up and you had the curly cord that went like two rooms away. Like that's who they're hanging out chatting on the phone with.

Michael Small
Well, it's bifurcated. He has sexual relationships, it seems pretty clear, and then he has friendship relationships and he isn't able to synthesize them.

Sarah Wendell 
They do seem to be very separate groups.

Fabio's Generosity: Then and Now

Michael Small 
Also, there's something a little bit there where they're talking about politics, and we know where he ultimately went with politics, which is a little bit nervous making. But I want to point out -- I don't want to skip over this -- he had generous feelings in him. He told me about a homeless person that he brought into the grocery store. Said, "Fill up your cart and go to the check out and I will cover whatever you buy." He also was proud -- he called them bums -- but he said, I always help the bums. And he said something funny, which was like, "And this is my money. It's not tax deductible." He said there was an article in LA Magazine about the homeless men on the streets and that it started out the first word of the article was, Fabio always helps us. 

Sarah Wendell
There is charity, there is kindness, but there is an element of ego to it. If you are the one doing it and you are like, go in the grocery store right now because I am here to provide. That has an element of ego in it. Like you said, I appreciate the gesture. I think it's a kind thing to do to that person. But also if you have all of this money, you could make a much larger impact giving that to a food bank. You give them money. They can make that dollar do incredible things. He could have filled 500 grocery carts if he donated to a food bank.

Michael Small
Yes and skipping ahead again, which we can't resist doing, he now claims to have 31 sports cars and he said he had over 300 dirt bikes. Trade those in and feed a lot of people and go ahead, keep three sports cars, three really expensive sports cars.

Fabio's Gay Fans

Michael Small
Anyway, I want to play this little clip when I asked him about his gay following.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
I called a friend and I said, "You probably don't know who Fabio is." And he said, "All gay men know who Fabio is." Are you aware of that?

Fabio
Oh yeah. All the time.

Michael Small
Really?

Fabio
All the time. They're very nice. They're always supportive of my career. They always have something nice to say. I tell you something the world is beautiful because it's colorful. Who am I to judge other people? You know I don't you see always kind of bother me when people always make judge about other people because I mean nobody's perfect. The world is beautiful because you know we have a lot of color. We have different people. If everybody was gonna be like me or like Peter or like you, the world would be... would be boring. People think in a different way, and I respect the way they think as far as if they don't hurt anybody else.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
It's such a contrast, you know, I love this world full of color. It's better if we're all different. And then you look at where he is right now politically and it's like, that's not something you actually practice or say out loud with your face now, what happened?

The Exhaustion of Being Fabio

Michael Small
Moving on, I have something that people might not know because I was with him so much. Every time the crowds went away and we were alone, it was like one of those blow up characters you put on your front lawn during the holidays. The air went out. And he fell flat on the lawn. He was exhausted. Often. "Oh, Michael, I'm so tired, so tired." Almost every day he had to go back to rest in the afternoon.

Sarah Wendell
Engaging with the public and always telling people what they want and then being observant enough to figure out what's the line that's going to get the laugh, what's the line that's going to connect with this total stranger who wants to touch my hair. That is exhausting.

Michael Small
Right, and if it can be believed, he told me that he once appeared on 14 talk shows in five days and he did seven magazine interviews in the same week. 

Sarah Wendell
I believe it. Because if you've got a manager like his, you're going to strike when the iron is hot and then you're going to keep the iron hot as long as you possibly can, which means more media.

Michael Small 
At one point he told me, "I barely have time to eat. I get about three hours of sleep each night. Still didn't recuperated. I said to Peter, if you take one more booking, I'm going to kill you." But while we're in LA, I was doing everything he was doing. But I wasn't that tired. And I was 36 at the time and he was supposedly 32.

Sarah Wendell
Supposedly.

Michael Small
Yes, and that's when we get to another one of the little mistruths. I have it on tape. He told me his birth year was 1961. But he was actually born in 1959. And he was 34, which I guess was an age that was too old for Fabio to be. What was funny is that every time I asked him for dates, like, I was always like, what year did you arrive in New York? What year did you do this? What year did you do that? He had so much trouble and I realized it was the math. He was calculating everything so that it would deal with this different birthday. I was hoping that I was not stealing his energy. And when we went to Hawaii to photograph his calendar, he was doing all these sensual poses and really looking comfortable as you said but it was not comfortable. At one point he said it was so cold and the wind was blowing water on me and he was given red thongs to wear and he told me it's killing my feet. For one shot he was holding shamrock macaws which are colorful birds and one scratched his eye. Privately, he said to me, "I came over here and they tried to create my fantasies in a calendar.  Well, then my fantasy was a nightmare. I don't want to remember my fantasies anymore."

Sarah Wendell 
It's all a facade with a great deal of discomfort underneath.

Michael Small
The photos were being shot by Lynn Goldsmith, who's a very fine celebrity photographer. I heard her keep saying to him during the shooting, "You're happy, Fabio, you're happy." And when it was done, someone asked if there would be another shot. And Fabio said, "If there is, it's with a gun. I can't take it anymore."

Sarah Wendell
Oh goodness, buddy

Fabio's Family and Childhood

Michael Small
The one thing I haven't mentioned to you so far, which of course I had to get for People Magazine, was the story of his past. And it was interesting. When I asked him questions about his love life and romance, that's when the air went out of the balloon. Sometimes. But when I asked about his childhood, he totally lit up. H   is story is, he was the son of an extremely wealthy engineer who started a conveyor belt company. And he had a lot of conflict with his father who wanted Fabio to go into the family business. And as Amy, his friend, told me, he worshipped his mother. She was a former Miss Milan, but she had a traumatic history. Her father, Fabio's grandfather, had spoken out against the Nazis during World War II. So the Nazis showed up one day, they beat him and sent him to Auschwitz, and he never came back.

Sarah Wendell 
Oh no.

Michael Small 
And his mother witnessed this.  And his grandmother lived with the family from that point onwards. He says that his first five years were spent almost exclusively with her. And when he was a teenager, she died of cancer, which is why you may remember he worked for the American Cancer Society and did a lot of good work, anti-smoking work. She apparently didn't smoke, but she died of cancer. Now it's a little hard to hear because he got softer when he was serious, but I want to play you what happened, how he got the news of his grandmother's death.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Fabio
Listen to this. I was in bed. I was sleeping, okay? Now this guy, this motherfucker was, you know I told you, he was kind of an alcoholic. Probably he was drinking because, you know, of course my parents were gone. My brother was away. My sister was with my parents. I was the only kid in the house. He came over and wake me up like this, "Fabio! Hey! Wake up! Wake up -- your grandmother just died." And I was like "What? What?" You know, I couldn't believe. He told me like that. And you know, I wanted... I got into a physical fight with him like a week later because I was so, you know, shocked the way he told me. It was hard because it was the biggest shock I had in my life. I cried for months. But you know, there are some things, you know, it's like when you're a kid, when you're a boy, you never forget. And I remember when I went to the cemetery and I was crying and my mom was there. And when they started burying her, my mom went absolute berserk. Nuts. S he threw herself on the ground and I was like, oh man, worst, worst experience in my life.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Aw.

Michael Small
That's a story where you really feel it. And it's the only time I ever heard Fabio use an expletive or say unkind word about anyone. I meant to tell you that the person who woke him up was one of the many people employed by the family. That guy was fired. That's also around the time that Fabio hit his teenage years, and started acting out. A lot. He got in his head that the US was the only place he wanted to live. While he was visiting the US, he ran away from his family and went to stay with a friend in Houston. Nobody knew where he was, supposedly. When they found him and he returned to Milan, he was constantly in trouble at school. This is something he was actually quite happy to remember. So I'll share that with you.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Fabio
I used to change about two or three college a year. Because I get kicked out from every single one.

Michael Small
You got kicked out when?

Fabio
Fourteen.

Michael Small
Around the time you started your modeling career?

Fabio
Yeah.

Michael Small
What was it you were doing wrong?

Fabio
I was very hyper. So I couldn't, you know, I was like, just sit down and listen to the lesson. You know, always picking on the guy in front of me or the little girl beside me. So they always, you know, they always kick me out. So funny because the principal once called me, he really liked me a lot, you know, because I was, you know, I was very independent kid, you know, I already had my own mind, already had my own, you know. So I was getting kicked out all the time and I was going... they always send me to his office and he was the nicest person to me. He always used to offer me cappuccino and you know,   taking care of me. So I was... I wanted to be kicked out all the time, you know? My parents had a major problem with me. Okay? I was in school. This was in Milan. the principal really liked me a lot. The teacher, not that much. I used to like make fun of them. It was like laugh all the way. And they hate my guts. They were very, very, very strict. They many time abused kids. And I always tell them, you know, they... one of these guys would put a hand on me, I would kill him. I wasn't afraid of them. As a matter of fact, I was challenging them all the time. The rest of the kids, they wanted to do whatever I wanted to do.

Michael Small
Were you popular? Were you pretty popular?

Fabio
Oh, in the schools? Oh, very.

Michael Small
Did you have long hair then?

Fabio
Not this long, but long. Yes, much longer than all the other guys. Oh, my parents, were going through the wall. I mean, they were like... crazy. They took everything away from me. But  still I was kicked out from the church. I remember one time I put, you know, like the plastic balloon that you blow and you put under the chair.

Michael Small
Oh, a whoopee cushion.

Fabio
When somebody sits on it, then brrrrrr. The priest, when he sit. That's how mischievous I was when I was a little kid. Everything was so strict. Everything was run by the priest and you know the way they run it. Awful. I used to remember all the priests who tell me ⁓ you know, one day you're gonna be in jail and I'm gonna bring the food for you, or all these stupid things.  And I'd say, "Yeah, yeah. Right."  

[End of interview excerpt]

Michael Small
He also really enjoyed talking to me about a bad ski accident he had while he was competing in a ski slalom at 15. He'd won a race and in the second race there was bad weather. He fell, he got a bad break, and he talked to me for like 11 minutes about that. As part of his recovery, he started lifting weights. And while there, a well-known Italian fashion photographer saw Fabio and asked Fabio's parents if they'd let their son do a modeling job. And they agreed, and Fabio continued modeling only on weekends and after school. And then he had to serve in the military for a little while, which was required. I did ask our Italian correspondent to meet his parents and she visited them at their country house on the Adriatic coast.

Sarah Wendell
As you do.

Michael Small
It sounds pretty spectacular. There was like a full staff of two maids, a cook, a gardener, tennis courts, just an absolutely beautiful place. And she found that Fabio's father still had mixed feelings about his son's life choices. Like, he told her, "My son has been ruined by women."

Sarah Wendell
Okay.

Michael Small
There clearly was still a lot of family love. He would go on vacations with them all the time. A sign of parents who love their child: In his bedroom, our correspondent saw that they had kept his teddy bear, his floppy rabbit, his shell collection, and his toy cars.  So when Fabio got to New York in the early 80s, he immediately got a huge contract with Ford Models. One of the first large jobs was with the Gap. He posed for his first romance novel in 1987.

Fabio's Intriguing Manager

And then when he met Peter, everything changed. You can already tell that I thought Peter was really interesting. Intriguing. And I really wanted to understand how he ended up in this role. He told me that he wanted to keep the focus of the article on Fabio. And here's what he said.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
If someone were ask me right now about the story, I would say you're a part of the story. Because you are. I mean, I didn't know that when I walked in here. And that's why I'm asking you questions about you too.

Peter Paul
Because I've been involved in political things and so forth, I t doesn't add anything to the story.

Michael Small
No, it doesn't, but it's a surprise.

Peter Paul
I don't want any surprises, though. I mean I'm very willing to be as helpful as I can. I honestly don't want to be a major -- If I'm like in a paragraph or two, I'd be happy with that. I don't want to get into all my... my history is another book and I'm saving that for something else, okay?

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
All right. So this is, we're starting to hint at the thing that reporter Michael Small missed.

Sarah Wendell
I don't want any surprises, he says. This is a person whose job it is to control narrative.

Michael Small
Yes.

Sarah Wendell
This guy is invested in building the narrative of Fabio. He does not want any surprises and...

Michael Small
He did a terrific job of that, of course.

Sarah Wendell
He surely did. 

Michael Small
But he did tell me some things about himself. He said he was born in 1947. He studied philosophy for two years at Dartmouth. That's behind all the philosophical talk you heard, right? He left to go to the London School of Economics. Then he came back to finish his undergraduate degree and get a law degree at the University of Miami. He told me that he became head of the World Trade Center of Miami, which I think is true.  I was intrigued by the photos of presidents on his wall. And here is what he told me.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Michael Small
Why do we have all the presidents here? Is that from the bicentennial?

Peter Paul
No, I've been involved politically over the years.

Michael Small
With a particular group?

Peter Paul
All of them.

Michael Small
Such as?

Peter Paul
I guess beginning really with Lyndon Johnson. I was the youngest precinct captain with his campaign. I also was one of the first supporters of Jimmy Carter. But then I also worked with a number of people connected with the Republican administrations.

Michael Small
There are the Reagans and Nixon. Did you work with them also?

Peter Paul
I worked with associates of Nixon. I worked with kitchen cabinet people of Reagan.

Michael Small
Worked on a campaign?

Peter Paul
No, in different kinds of projects.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
I've worked with all of them.

Michael Small
I think he was speaking loosely,

Sarah Wendell
Yes, the lack of specificity is itself a statement.

Michael Small
Key point, again, we didn't have the internet back then. So I was limited in the research I could do about anybody. I did have a bureau I could call and say look up documents, but I didn't see a reason for that. I'm not sure how I found it, but I found some sort of document or article about some legal problems for Peter in Miami. I asked him about it, and he repeated to me that this was way off track from an article about romance and love. That was true. It was way off track. So I was willing to... let it drop.

Sarah Wendell
That is the scope of your assignment. You are writing an article for People. People doesn't need to know that his manager has prior convictions. Unless his criming is also applicable to Fabio. But wow, is that illustrative of the type of person that you need to have that sort of flexible approach to things, including morality, to really make somebody famous in a hurry. Sometimes.

Michael Small
Well, at some point, he had a major career change and he ended up in Hollywood where he ran a foundation that put on events to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution. And a lot of people got involved with that. That's how he met a lot of celebrities, including Stan Lee, founder of Marvel Comics, who became a good friend. And that's how, he ended up introducing Stan Lee to Fabio. Another celebrity he met through that was Jimmy Stewart who helped with an unusual project he told me about.

Sarah Wendell (1:30:40)
Jimmy Stewart. Okay.

Michael Small
Listen to this.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Peter Paul
I to sent over "It's a Wonderful Life" to Boris Yeltsin and to the minister of telecommunications in Poland on the first day of the new commonwealth of independent states. It was in the Wall Street Journal. I got press on this. What we did was, I wanted them share share an American holiday tradition for the first time when they had the freedom to do so on their television. So I got Jimmy Stewart to do a message to the Russian people and a separate message to the Polish people. We sent over, "It's a Wonderful Life." It's dubbed in Russian. Jimmy did a special message. The first day of the commonwealth of independent states, which was New Year's Day, the first day they had the freedom of broadcasting throughout the former Soviet Union. The first American broadcast they saw was "It's a Wonderful Life." And by having those people share a tradition with Americans, using the benefits of the media, the beneficial capabilities of the technology, we're able to share and commune over a special experience that helps them understand Americans.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Michael Small
I assume that's all true. It was in the Wall Street Journal and wow. 

Sarah Wendell 
"I got press on this" was the part that caught my ear. This guy is a big thinker. Like he thinks very broadly about reach and impact. 

Michael Small
And Fabio was the next new thing. This is where I talked to them about their relationship. Their entire lives were intertwined every minute. And Here's what they said about that.

[Interview excerpt begins]

Peter Paul
What more different people can you find than Fabio and me? We were talking about this last night. We were having dinner and we were laughing about the fact. We spend more time together than most married people. And we're so different, and yet we have a certain synchronicity where we understand how each other thinks at this point. And it's compatible. Don't ask me why. There's no way you could have predicted that Fabio with his background and me with my background were going to hit it off.

Michael Small
The two of you have a language all your own. I see a little turn of the eye and he's telling you I'm not happy and you know it.

Peter Paul
I don't want this to sound like we're lovers or something because we're not. We're both very heterosexual. If anybody has any doubts they can look at my kids and all the women that he knows. At the same time, I mean we know each other at this point. We travel together and we spend a lot of time together.

Michael Small
But he can give you the tiniest little look -- and you know what's going on.

Peter Paul
I'm pretty perceptive when I want to be anyway. I mean that's one of my characteristics.

[Interview excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Peter Paul has a very specific set of people skills that he has deployed extremely successfully. Yeah, at least to that point.

Michael Small 
At least to that point.  I will say I laughed as I told you, I enjoyed them. After my article was published, Peter and Fabio seemed to be okay with it. In fact, Fabio later said that it was a turning point when his father admitted that Fabio had finally done well, the cover of People magazine. That's all I'm doing is trying to put families together again. That's my job. Peter asked me if I'd ghostwrite the book that became Fabio's biography. I said, sure. I was freelance at that point, and I really needed money. And it was one of the highest paid jobs of my life. I think he paid me $10,000 for two weeks of work, which would be like $23,000 today. He paid me on time. The project was fun. Nobody hassled me. Everybody appreciated what I did. It was a pleasure.

Sarah Wendell
Nice.

Michael Small
But a few years later, I discovered that things did not go well for them. I think their relationship ended in 1995. So it was only two years later. Sometime after the publication of Fabio's book, Fabio Fitness, which was dedicated to Peter Paul. I was driving somewhere. I was flipping the radio dial. And I heard two familiar voices. And it was Fabio and Peter Paul on a talk radio show. And they were not happy with each other.

Sarah Wendell
Oh no.

Michael Small
Yes, in fact, they were yelling at each other. I don't want to get too detailed because your memory can mess things up. But my impression is that it had to do with a feeling of injustice related to money. And I heard these words from Peter Paul. "I did everything for you. Didn't I get you People Magazine? Didn't I get you Michael Small?" 

Sarah Wendell
"Didn't I get you, Michael Small?" Oh my God.

Michael Small 
If someone has that tape somewhere and wants to prove me wrong, maybe that's what my brain heard when he said People magazine. But I am pretty sure my name was mentioned. Somehow it didn't sit well. But I just let it go. And maybe about 10 years ago, on a whim, I looked up Peter Paul on the internet. Oh boy.

Sarah Wendell
Yeah, it goes in a different direction for him, doesn't it?

Legal Troubles for Fabio's Manager

Michael Small
Yes, it turns out that after Fabio left his life, Peter took on the role of arranging a fundraiser in 2000 for the Democratic Party, but especially benefiting Hillary Clinton. It was a big deal. It was very expensive to go like $25,000 for a table or something. There were appearances by Cher and Patti LaBelle and Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, I think, were there. But after the event, Hillary suddenly distanced herself from Peter Paul. It related to money. I don't want to get into all the details, but there was a lot of disagreement about money relating to donations. I can't be the ultimate source on any of that. There are things on the internet people could look at. But remember that little legal thing that I let drop? It turns out Hillary found out more about what that was. What she found out is that in 1979, Peter was involved with something called the Cuban Coffee Caper.

Sarah Wendell 
I'm sorry. "The Cuban Coffee Caper."

Michael Small
Put that in your romance novel. He and his cohorts tried to trick Castro into buying $87 million of coffee, but the coffee didn't exist. So they planned to take the money, send an empty ship, sink the ship, and keep the money. Unfortunately, there was a problem. The ship was supposed to dock somewhere. They weren't allowed to dock. The boat didn't sink. And they got caught. When the investigators came to Peter's house, they also found a large sack of cocaine.

Sarah Wendell
Uh oh.

Michael Small
Now, he said he thought it contained coffee beans. But he ultimately went to prison for almost three years. To give Peter's side, he said he was part of a government covert action that would never come out, and it was an anti-communist activity. When he was on parole, he tried to go to Canada. He used the name of a dead man. He was caught again. Had to go back to prison. Somehow he came out of all of that and ended up running that foundation in California. When Hillary found this out and distanced herself, he started filing lawsuits against Bill and Hillary, I think for about a decade, claiming that their finances weren't right for the fundraiser. But the courts did not uphold any of his suits. There was a fine that was paid by the people who organized the fundraiser, but it wasn't a huge fine. But the courts were involved with another action. Because after breaking up with Fabio, Peter had created Stan Lee Media in 1998 to market the Marvel characters. And with his excellent skills, he could have done an amazing job of that. But according to the courts, he manipulated the stock to raise the price.

Sarah Wendell
Oh, they don't like that.

Michael Small
They don't like it.

Sarah Wendell
That is very frowned upon as an activity.

Michael Small
So once again, he was caught. took forever for the sentence to be made and for final verdict. He had gone to Brazil. He had a business project in Brazil, but he gone to Brazil, presumably to get away from this maybe, and he was held in a Brazil prison for a while. Then he was in house arrest here, but ultimately he went to prison and I guess he served for about six years and then was let out on parole. I think he's about 80 now and he still has a brilliant mind, I'm sure, and I hope he's using it to stay out of trouble.

Fabio's Goose Incident: The True Story

Michael Small
And this brings us back to Fabio. Just to summarize some of the things that happened to him after Peter Paul left his life, there was the goose incident, which by the way, on a People podcast, he clarified, that he was not hit in the face by a goose while on that roller coaster in 1999. The goose hit a video camera, a piece of metal from the camera hit his nose. There was a lot of blood, but the wound was healed with a single stitch.

Sarah Wendell
You know, it's probably better that the whole goose didn't hit his face.

Michael Small
That's what they say.

Sarah Wendell
Geese are large and also terrible in their attitude. Goose might have taken an exception to that.

Fabio's Tussle with George Clooney

Michael Small  
He said he felt very lucky. There was also a tussle in a restaurant in 2007 when George Clooney thought that Fabio's fans at his table were taking photos of him, so he gave him the finger. And Fabio went over and tried to negotiate, and then George wasn't nice. And anyway, they got into something that ended with George leaving the restaurant. But they are not friends. On the positive side, he was also in movies, almost always cameos as himself. Zoolander, Dude, Where's My Car?

Sarah Wendell
Yup.

Michael Small
TV appearances. He did endorsements for Old Spice. And there was a nationwide commercial that he was in during the 2006 Super Bowl.

U.S. Citizen Fabio: MAGA Politics

Michael Small
And big news in 2016, Fabio, who always loved the US, became a US citizen.

Sarah Wendell
That took a while.

Michael Small
Yes.  That is also around the time that Fabio started getting more political. In 2017, he attended the New Year's Eve party at Mar-a-Lago. He praised Donald Trump at one point for speaking his mind. And then in appearances on Howard Stern and Bill Maher, he laughed along when there was some misogyny there and he didn't speak up. But then in appearances on Fox News and Tucker Carlson, he pretty much gave a MAGA manifesto, blaming immigrants for America's problems, raving against Joe Biden, and things like that.

Sarah Wendell
I love how like 35 seconds ago you just talked about how this guy emigrated to the United States, became a citizen in 2016. And he's like, yes, immigrants are the problem.

Michael Small
Well, he said they're illegal. They're not following the law. I followed the law. You need to follow the law So that is that whole trope. And I've heard it from other people. And I can't litigate that here. It's just where he's at. And I want to say that I hope the kindness that I saw in him comes back into his heart in a major way flooding out everything else. That's my wish for Fabio. But now is my wish for me.

The Fate of Fabio-Related Treasures?

Michael Small
I am going to show you some things I saved and see if you have thoughts about what I should do with it. You kind of needed the background to decide what we think about these things, bearing in mind all of that, including the most recent things about Peter Paul and Fabio. So the CD, I think I keep.

Sarah Wendell (1:43:04)
You have to keep, your wife loves it. It's very important. Gotta keep that.

Michael Small 
Five copies of the wonderful biography. Can you think of any type of giveaway we can offer? Or can I say, the next five people, who sign up for my mailing list at throwitoutpodcast.com. I will write to you and ask you if you want a copy of this beautiful 60 page document. Is that a good thing to do with it or what do you think?

Sarah Wendell
I think that's an excellent thing to do. I have two questions. One, has Fabio signed those copies?

Michael Small
No.

Sarah Wendell
Okay, so then you should sign them because Peter Paul got him Michael Small. So you need to autograph those copies. And you can even say, I will personalize it. You need to personalize the autograph to the people.

Michael Small
Okay.

Sarah Wendell
People, if you are listening to this and you are thinking, gee whiz, do I want a copy of Fabio's? Yes, yes you do. You want all the photos and you want Michael Small to write you a personal message in the style of Fabio. It's a very important keepsake for you and your generations to come.

Michael Small
Never had my autograph requested before, but there is always the beginning. Now here's the calendar with Fabio looking incredibly comfortable. 

Sarah Wendell
Oh my God. Okay, from my view, on the camera all I see is Fabio's eyes coming up. Hello, Fabio.

Michael Small
The problem is that we used this as our calendar from 1995 so I can't really give it away.

Sarah Wendell
The internet says that you can reuse that calendar in 2034. So if you hold onto it, all the days will match up and you can relive the bounty of Fabio.

Michael Small 
That sort of goes against my rules, which is not supposed to keep things with future ideas. I'm supposed to use them now.

Sarah Wendell
Very against the rules. Yes.

Michael Small
I suppose I could hang that up and enjoy Fabio's pictures. How about the publisher's sheet for Pirate. It says, "Even the hardened heart of Italian privateer Marco Glaviano is touched by the sight of an innocent orphan 12-year-old trapped in the clutches of evil Spanish pirates." Which sounds kind of good, ⁓ but  there is a superb podcast called Reformed Rakes.

Sarah Wendell
Oh yes, I am aware and they are amazing.

Michael Small
They did a two-part series, four hours of talking about Fabio, and one of the things they said was this book was boring. I think I should save the copy of People magazine that Fabio was on the cover because it was my biggest story ever.

Sarah Wendell
Is part of the rules that you're allowed to sell things?

Michael Small
I could sell it, sure.

Sarah Wendell
Okay, because you know, old issues of People Magazine go for, you know, 20 bucks, 25 bucks. You could put together for eBay, just as a science experiment, the ultimate Fabio collectors package and see how high it goes.

Michael Small 
Maybe, okay. I need to consider,

Sarah Wendell
Mm-hmm.

Michael Small
And then, I have so many things. I'm going to tell you what they are. I have the five and a half hours of interview tapes. I have a write-up of Joan Rivers' date with Fabio at Tavern on the Green and the buggy ride they took afterwards. I have letter from Leeza Gibbons to Peter Paul saying, "I have never seen his humanity waver nor his energy wane. Maybe the secret is those luscious locks." And she is talking about Fabio. A letter from Dick Clark to Peter Paul, also praising Fabio. A copy of the lawsuit by Rhonda Gaynor, his former manager against marketing person, Peter Paul and Fabio. A copy of the Gentle Conqueror, his fan club newsletter from December 1992. 

Sarah Wendell
Okay, I know exactly what you should do with all this.

Michael Small
Yeah?

Sarah Wendell
What else do you have?

Michael Small
A letter thanking me for talking to her at John and Leeza taping from Marilyn Campbell, author of Topaz Dreams. A page of the script from Acapulco H.E.A.T. which was the TV show that was going to make Fabio's acting career, but it didn't. It didn't do well with critics. But here's a little excerpt. It says... Sibela: Handsome, wealthy, charming. Why hasn't some clever woman locked you in her bedroom? Claudio: Because she hasn't found the key. That was Claudio played by Fabio. So what was your idea?

Sarah Wendell
You need to reach out to Bowling Green University's Brown Popular Culture Library, with a full inventory of what you have and ask if they would like you to donate that to their collection. They have an extensive collection of romance. I donated papers. Like they have stuff from me. I think you should reach out and ask if they would be interested in the collection that you have of your time working with Fabio.

Michael Small
Wow.  Thank you so much.


Sarah Wendell
This would be the Michael Small collection.

More Fabio Podcasts

Michael Small
Yay! Now that you have solved all my problems pretty much, it is time to repeat that Smart Podcast Trashy Books is a fantastic podcast that Sarah is the host of. And on January 9th, 2026, there was an episode, Art History Analysis of Romance Covers with Amanda Matta.

Sarah Wendell
Yes.

Michael Small
And they did discuss some Fabio covers.

Sarah Wendell
We did talk about the Fabs. You can't not talk about the Fabs when you're talking about covers. That is one of my favorite episodes. That was episode 700 of my podcast. So I did a very special episode. If you look for Smart Podcasts, Trashy Books on YouTube, the whole video with all of the pictures is there. And Amanda Matta is a fantastic commentator on art history and on Royals.

Michael Small
So everybody listen to that and enjoy yourself the way I did.  Also for fans of Fabio, I want to add that my old alma mater or whatever it is when you, the place it used to work, People Magazine did a podcast series called People in the 90s. And Jason Scheeler, who was one of the hosts of that, really wanted Fabio and went through an amazing process trying to track down Fabio and succeeded and got him on. That would be the best place to hear a fairly recent interview with Fabio. And also, I do want to repeat that the podcast Reformed Rakes did a two-part series. They were so thorough.

Sarah Wendell
Oh so good.

Michael Small
That's from 2024. If you're a Fabio fan, listen to that. And to just wrap things up, this is a quote from my article, the audio was not good enough on my audio tape. Fabio said to me, "I'm going to keep developing something inside. That way, when I'm 60, I'm not going to be one of those people who try all the plastic surgery and be ridiculous. I'm going to say, I express myself, and now I'm a happy man." Borrowing from Fabio's own phone line, I just want to play you this.

[Phone line excerpt begins]

Fabio
Thank you for calling.  And I hope to hear from you really soon.

[Phone line excerpt ends]

Sarah Wendell
Sure thing, Fabs. Whatever you say.

Michael Small
Sarah, thank you so much. I had so much fun. Everybody, we really need people to sign up for our newsletter. And you can do that at throwitoutpodcast.com. you'll also get to hear previous episodes with Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Kiefer Sutherland, and other people who might interest you. Thank you so much. Bye Sarah.

Sarah Wendell
Bye bye.

[Theme song begins]

I Couldn't Throw It Out theme song
Performed by Don Rauf, Boots Kamp and Jen AYehs
Written by Don Rauf and Michael Small
Produced and arranged by Boots Kamp

Look up that stairway
To my big attic
Am I a hoarder
Or am I a fanatic?

Decades of stories
Memories stacked
There is a redolence
Of some irrelevant facts

Well, I couldn't throw it out
I had to scream and shout
It all seems so unjust
But still I know I must
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out
Before I turn to dust
I've got to throw it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out

I'll sort through my possessions
In these painful sessions
I guess this is what it's about
The poems, cards and papers
The moldy musty vapors
I just gotta sort it out

Well I couldn't throw it out
Well I couldn't throw it out
Oh, I couldn't throw it out
I couldn't throw it out

[Theme song ends]

END TRANSCRIPT