"Get a job where you don't have to work weekends," his dad added. That aspect of a career Patrizio hasn't been able to fulfil.
"So I sing," he says. "But then I always sang. I used to listen to my parents' records as my dad recorded music for his restaurant. These were only Italian records, though."
Patrizio, who gabbles away incessantly, has an engaging loquacity, possibly engendered by too many back-to-back interviews.
Patrizia, 29, has just put out his second CD, Forever Begins Tonight, and tonight he is singing at the His People venue in Goodwood. The CD contains a number of old romantic ballads which he sings in Italian and English such as You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, Always on My Mind, Only You, and You're My World.
Patrizio was last in South Africa in February when he appeared on Top Billing.
The reaction from female viewers was a boost to his burgeoning career.
"When they aired that show, it started a Patrizio boom," he says without a hint of an overbearing ego.
"I'm a softie, I'm mild.
"I want to bring back the romance in South African men - but I want to be a performer, not a sex symbol.
"Local men say they want to be like me - and a woman told me that since seeing me her husband had bought a bottle of wine and took over the cooking one night."
Patrizio speaks good, attractively accented English. And where did he learn to speak it? In Vienna, where he lived for 12 years.
His father opened the first Italian pizzeria in the Austrian capital. And of course Patrizio also speaks German. Besides, he has smatterings of Spanish and other European languages and is already picking up commonplace Afrikaans phrases like "baie dankie". ;;
He says he even once began learning Polish. Why?
"I had a Polish girlfriend and a girlfriend is always the best dictionary."
Having grown up in Naples he is of course familiar with the old Neopolitan songs like O Sole Mio and Mattinata.
"But I only sing them in the shower," he laughs. "My mission is to show that Italian songs are more than Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli. And I sing the way I like. Sometimes I'm more Italian than the Italians. My hobby, my passion, is my profession."
He is also determined to "keep the art of romance alive" which he believes "got lost somewhere between the hip and the hop". He also believes that la dolce vita is more than simply the sweet life and that "it is the opposite of ignorance".
Is he himself romantically involved? Clearly not.
"I'm married to the music," he replies, admitting that he is used to living out of a suitcase, and it does get lonely.
"It's hard to have a relationship in this business."
Patrizio reckons he began singing when he was five, singing the same songs on his parents' old records. When he was eight they bought him a guitar.
By his mid teens he was doing Elvis impersonations in Austria and when he was 17 he sang for the Pope in Poland.
In 1999 an uncle persuaded Patrizio to return to Italy where he became a television entertainer. In 2003 he was introduced to music producer Chritian Seitz, and his career took another leap, this time into recording his first album.
Away from the stage, what does he liked to do?
"I love to cook, and I love to eat," he admits. "When I'm stressed out, I eat."
Source: Tonight NZ
