Goodbye Mike. The Italian world of media and culture is weeping. It is crying over the death of an honest man with principles; honest in his way of doing television, honest in his relationship with his viewers and honest with his friends.
Mr Bongiorno would have wanted to die in a TV studio, maybe during a live programme, but being such a perfectionist, it is almost certain that he would have wanted to rehearse his death scene.
Mr Bongiorno has marked the birth of public and private television in Italy, the latter belonging to Silvio Berlusconi. He was the embodiment of professional TV but the famous semiologist Umberto Eco wrote in 1961: "Mike Bongiorno is not ashamed of being ignorant and does not feel the need to educate himself."
The presenter cried because of this accusation even though with this affirmation he entered high-handedly into the world of Italian semiology. Thirty years later, Mr Eco added: "Mike Bongiorno, therefore, convinced the public, with a living, and triumphant example, the value of mediocrity. He does not provoke inferiority complexes despite presenting himself as an idol, and the public acknowledged him, by being grateful to him and loving him. He represents an ideal that nobody should strive to reach because everyone is already at his level. No religion has ever been so indulgent as his faithful. In him, the tension between being and having to become, is annulled. He tells his fans: You are God, rest as you are."
He was surely not one of the myths of Italian national culture in the years after 1968 and his way of thinking about television drew him to that "national popular" culture that belonged to state television, described in the 1980s with the title "mamma Rai" (mother Rai).
It was Silvio Berlusconi who convinced Mr Bongiorno to leave Rai for Canale 5 as a director and presenter of successful television programmes. That is how a sort of identification process took place between Canale 5 programmes and those of Rai.
The quiz master - who was surely not loved by the Italian intelligentia for his way of representing the average Italian and who would marvel at new things despite his success - was then celebrated as a libertarian icon in his late years.
After being dismissed due to his age from the new executive board at Mediaset, the television company belonging to the Berlusconi family - he had just celebrated his 80th birthday but he still felt in "good shape" - he recounted on a live television programme on RaiTre how he was a friend and partner of Mr Berlusconi. He said he was betrayed by the "Proci" [in Homer's Odyssey, Proci were the suitors of Penelope] and moreover, he was kept at a distance from the innumerable administrative offices of the government that prevented him - "an old friend" - from speaking to Mr Berlusconi.
"More than five months have passed since November and he has never returned my calls," he said on the TV show. "I have left many messages, but he has never come back to me. I'm very sad and I say to myself, 'What have I done? It is not possible that after 30-35 years of working in a company, even contributing to its foundation, all of a sudden one finds oneself dismissed and no one salutes you or shakes your hand," he lamented, almost in tears.
Immediately after his TV appearance, Mr Berlusconi called him. Together they had built commercial TV in Italy and for 32 years they had gone through the most important stages of the TV network, of which Mr Bongiorno had been vice president.
However, Mr Berlusconi has always denied that there had ever been rifts between them.
"He has never argued with me personally. I believe there were some misunderstandings with some men at Mediaset."
Mr Bongiorno's outburst was manipulated by Mr Berlusconi's political adversaries for their own ends and for a brief period, Mr Bongiorno became another illustrious victim of the alleged "Berlusconi regime". This incident made the rounds on the web and on blogs.
Yet once again Mr Bongiorno amazed everyone with his loyalty and toned down the behaviour - surely not gentlemanly - of a thankless person who had considered Mr Bongiorno a burden.
Mr Berlusconi has described Mr Bongiorno's death as "a great sorrow". And then he added: "For me he was a work mate to whom I'm bound by a big friendship."
Mr Bongiorno had a dream: That of becoming senator of the Republic.
This man - who has formed (was) part and parcel of the history of television with his generosity and naivety and his incredible experience - could not have been left out of a biography of World War II.
On the Dizionario Della Resistenza Italiana (Dictionary of the Italian Resistance), Massimo Rendina - a partisan commander during the fight for Liberation - has dedicated to Mr Bongiorno various lines, highlighting that "after having been evacuated from the Piedmont Alps on September 8, he crossed the alpine mountain passes during winter, bringing messages to Switzerland on behalf of the Resistance". Since then, the controversies on Mr Bongiorno's past as a partisan, have abounded. According to his cell mate at San Vittorio, Indro Montanelli, Mr Bongiorno was arrested only because his mother had an American passport.
Loyal as usual, Mr Bongiorno had said that it was just a simple assignment of relaying news between the Allied troops and the partisans because he knew English and that he was later freed in exchange of a German in-mate because he was an American citizen. In fact, throughout his life, he would remind everyone that he was born in the United States. Goodbye great Mike.