Rosario Fiorello, star of the popular Italian show “Viva Radio 2.”

ROME, Aug. 15 — The season’s end of the wildly popular radio program “Viva Radio 2” has left millions of Italian listeners feeling bereft and disconsolate.

“Don’t leave us orphaned for too long,” wrote a blogger named Mary, musing on the Fiorello-less months stretching before her. Sarah Nichele, who runs a Web site devoted to Fiorello, said that many people had written to convey “how empty their lives were” now that “Viva Radio 2” is off the air.

The show will not return until October.

Fiorello was surprised to hear that a non-Italian paper was interested in interviewing him. Apart from a bit role in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” he hasn’t exported his shtick outside Italy. (“Can I use the opportunity to say hello to some of my friends in America?” he asked, reeling off a Hollywood A-list that included John Turturro, John Travolta, Sylvester Stallone and Dustin Hoffman).

But here he’s a superstar, and one of the country’s most popular showmen. In recent months he’s been on the cover of several magazines, including the Italian edition of Vanity Fair, a popular women’s gossip magazine and Famiglia Cristiana, a widely read Roman Catholic news weekly.

And it was Fiorello who, on live television, wished the Italian soccer team good luck on behalf of the nation before it kicked off the first game.

Fiorello, 46, is a former D.J. and television entertainer. Despite past successes, he has no intention of returning to the small screen, for now.

“People say that when I left television for radio, I was going backwards,” he said. “But I see it as a step forward. It shows that in Italy you can use inferior means to get tremendous results.”

He also does funny celebrity endorsements for Fiat and for Infostrada, a telephone company. He just recently came out with a reading of one of Mr. Camilleri’s books on CD.

“The Fiorello phenomenon,” read the cover of the Catholic magazine.

Actually, the real phenomenon is that he has managed to breathe new life into an old medium. “If radio is alive, if it’s at the center of the interest of experts and advertising investors, it’s above all because of Fiorello,” Aldo Grasso, the media critic of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, wrote in June.

Fiorello, Mr. Grasso continued, should be credited with “bringing back the most rare and least technological good that exists: talent.”

At Radio Due, home of the lunchtime show (which runs again each night and the next morning), the mood is buoyant. “It broke records,” said Eodele Bellisario, deputy director of the channel, citing high audience shares and some two million radios tuned in each day.

“It was the event of the year,” he added, even though “Viva Radio 2” had just finished its fourth season.

Marco Baldini, one of the main writers, explained the show’s popularity: “It’s because we have fun together. Even at 46, we’re still horsing around.” Mr. Baldini has cast himself as the straight man to Fiorello’s verbal metamorphoses. “And we try not to be vulgar,” he added.

compilation CD would not go to the top of the charts.

In less than a month, it had reportedly sold 60,000 copies.

But “Viva Radio 2” is not all lighthearted banter. The show is topical. Daily meetings start with scouring the newspapers.

“You can’t be detached from reality,” Mr. Baldini said during a telephone interview. “The ideas just happen.” The two stars regularly rail against various social problems.

Still, it’s clear that above all Fiorello and Mr. Baldini have fun doing what they do, and the fun is infectious.

Wearing a baseball hat, military pants and sneakers, Fiorello bounded into the studio before the taping of one of the last shows of the season and exuded good cheer, a knack held over from his start as an entertainer in tourist villages.

With 10 minutes to go before taping, he took time to sign autographs, shook countless hands and was immortalized with admirers on dozens of digital cameras and cellphones. The same routine was repeated after the show.

With barely a pause during 75 minutes on the air, Fiorello periodically went in and out of his various personae. A talented singer and performer — he is currently on a stand-up tour that has reportedly been seen by 350,000 — he excels at impersonations poking gentle fun at quintessentially Italian foibles and politicians.

Fiorello said that feedback from his subjects had always been positive. “Berlusconi is smart; he knows that it’s to his advantage to be imitated and poked fun at,” Fiorello said.

In fact, he said, he got letters from the supporters of Romano Prodi, Mr. Berlusconi’s foe, demanding that he be imitated too. Fiorello complied.

One of his new characters is the recently elected president of the republic, Giorgio Napolitano. “Two minutes after Napolitano was elected, we were already working on southern stereotypes,” Mr. Baldini said.

Fiorello’s impersonation of the last president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, whose mandate ended in May, was rewarded by an on-air phone call from Mr. Ciampi. The politician unexpectedly called during a show in the spring, thanking Fiorello for “keeping me in line.”

The radio show has become so popular that Italian newspapers have reported on “Viva Radio 2” clubs, groups of friends that met daily to listen to the broadcast.

“When you capture people over time, you become a friend of sorts,” Mr. Baldini said. “You get into their hearts.”