Alejandro Ricardo Dolina (born May 20, 1945) is an Argentine broadcaster, who also achieved renown as a musician and a writer. Dolina was born in Baigorrita, Buenos Aires Province, and spent his childhood years in Caseros, a middle-class suburb of Buenos Aires city, with Yugoslav (in his own words -he never referred to a particular ethnic group in the defunct country) and Italian ancestry (he has also reminded his audiences that Dolina is a word preserved in many Slavic languages, meaning valley). He pursued music and writing since childhood. Although he steadfastly refuses to discuss his private life, he often recalls anecdotes about time spent in his youth in the company of musicians and professional gamblers (he confesses of having worked for a while as a dice man at an illegal casino, until his acquaintance Manuel Evequoz "rescued" him, preventing his going further astray and offering him the first jobs in the advertising business). In the early 1970s, Dolina made inroads into advertising copywriting and started publishing articles in Satiricón magazine, which was read for laughs but often provided deeper reflections on politics, society, and life in general. His main partner in this adventure was Carlos Trillo, who was also an advertising man and would later become a successful comics writer. In 1978, with Satiricón closed by the military dictatorship, Dolina started writing in Humor magazine, which treaded much more carefully to avoid closure or an even worse fate. During these years, Dolina (himself a moderate Peronist) wrote essays about honor, love, friendship, and invented a mythology centered on the Gray Angel of Flores neighborhood, fictitious writer Manuel Mandeb (according to himself, inspired by Manuel Evequoz, the man who had helped him in his early youth), using them as a pretext to deal with universal themes. These stories have since been published in the book "Crónicas del Ángel Gris" ("Chronicles of the Gray Angel") in 1987, and later morphed into a musical. With the return of democracy in 1983, Dolina started hosting a successful late radio show: originally named Demasiado tarde para lágrimas ("Too late for tears"). For several years he enjoyed a growing success; in 1987 he was voted the best humourist in a poll conducted by a primetime TV show, leaving behind some legendary comic actors such as Alberto Olmedo and Jorge Porcel, still active back then. In 1988 he started his own TV show La Barra de Dolina ("Dolina's Gang"); the show was daring enough to include soccer matches featuring some retired stars, and even St. Peter's & St. Paul's bonfires, an old more (safety matters aside, it's held as a bad omen to have real fire in a TV studio). As in his radio show, he'd greet members of the audience in person. In 1990 and 1991 Dolina kept his TV show once a week, while his daily radio show went on a hiatus. Its name was later changed for contractual reasons, in 1992 to El Ombligo del Mundo (a name shared by his resumed radio show and by a Saturday night TV-show); in 1993 he drops the TV show while the radio show gets its current name: La venganza será terrible ("Revenge will be terrible"). In 1991 he was nominated for the "TV or Radio Host" Konex Award for his work in the show. In spite of changes in the radio or TV station the show format suffered only minor changes since its inception in the mid '80s. To accommodate live audiences (free admittance until the place is full) many live studios were used: the Radio El Mundo (radio) and Canal 11 [1988] and ATC[1990, 1991] (TV) auditoriums; those at the House of Buenos Aires province [1989], House of Entre Ríos province [1989]; the Insurance Workers' Union [1992]. Then, the two-hour show was broadcast live Monday to Friday at midnight originally from the basement of the famous Café Tortoni. Due to security reasons, after República Cromagnon nightclub fire, it was transferred in 2005 to the Hotel Bauen, a recuperated business.