Peppino Mazzullo, the man who voiced Topo Gigio for 45 years, has died aged 100

A whole generation remembers Topo Gigio - the little mouse with enormous ears and a voice that sounded as if it were laughing even when it spoke. For almost half a century, the voice behind him belonged to Peppino Mazzullo. The Italian actor died of natural causes on 30 September at his home in Santo Stefano di Briga, near Messina in Sicily, where he had returned after retiring. He turned a hundred on 6 June and celebrated surrounded by neighbours, friends and colleagues.

Mazzullo began voicing Topo Gigio in 1961 and continued for about 45 years, until 2006. But he wasn't just a voice. He also came up with the way the mouse spoke, his expressions and the personality that turned a puppet into a favourite of children around the world. Gigio was created by Maria Perego and Federico Caldura and first appeared on television in 1959. His first voice was Domenico Modugno, but two years later Mazzullo arrived, and from then on actor and character were inseparable.

The story didn't stay confined to Italy. Mazzullo also voiced Gigio in Spanish, in an animated series from the late eighties dubbed in Madrid. In the nineties the mouse enjoyed a second youth alongside Brazilian presenter Xuxa, and on Italian television he shared the screen with stars of the calibre of Raffaella Carrà.

The loveliest story is the one he told himself. When he was about two years old, he saw a tiny creature next to his bed. He was so frightened he wanted to call his mother, but no sound would come out. When he finally told her, she calmed him down: it was a little gnome who would bring him luck. Decades later, in a RAI studio, he saw the Topo Gigio puppet for the first time - and its face seemed familiar.

He picked up the puppet and began bringing it to life. In the studio was actor Gino Bramieri, who, as soon as he heard him, told him not to forget that voice, because it could make him a lot of money. He was right. Much of what Gigio said was born in Mazzullo's head anyway: he improvised and, as he put it, nobody had to tell him what to do.

Born on 6 June 1926, he started out in theatre, studied in Rome and Milan, and then built a career in radio and television. He stopped voicing the character regularly in 2006 but never fully parted with him: at his hundredth birthday, standing beside him was Leo Valli, one of the voices who later took over the role.

Today children's characters are born in meetings, with focus groups and marketing plans. The story of a man who carried a mouse inside him from the age of two and lent it his voice for 45 years sounds almost like it belongs to another time. How many voices like that do we have left?