Restaurateur who founded Di Maggio's

Born: March 19, 1945;

Died: June 14, 2017

JOSEPH "Joe" Conetta, who has died aged 72, was one of those great Glaswegians of Italian heritage who helped take our cuisine to new levels with Italian family recipes and fresh ingredients, washed down by Italian wines. With umpteen aunties and uncles of Italian roots, he was related to most of the Italian-Scottish families in both Glasgow and Edinburgh during the post-war years, giving him a lifelong sense of identity as a passionate Scot proud of his Italian heritage.

He became best-known as co-founder of Di Maggio's restaurants, named in honour of the great Italian/American baseball player Joe DiMaggio, starting with one restaurant in Ruthven Lane, off Byres Road, and another in Shawlands. The restaurants started a new "casual dining culture" in Glasgow and prodded many other restaurateurs in the city and beyond to copy the idea.

In Di Maggio's, as in restaurants in Italy, you could talk out loud, even shout, and your kids would be welcomed instead of frowned upon. Gone was the awed whispering, self-consciousness and dread of waiters that we had been used to when treating our family to a meal out. Italian culture come to Scotland big time. And thank God for that.

The Di Maggio's chain, jointly run by Joe's son Tony, now has 20 restaurants, 1,000 staff and an annual turnover of around £35 million, all a result of the vision of Joe Conetta and his partner Mario Gizzi. Their first Di Maggio's were probably the first in Scotland to offer home delivery pizza, now a way of life to many of us. "It was a time when most Scots didn't want garlic in their food on their breath," Joe's son Tony recalled. It was also an era when little or no Italian food was available in our supermarkets, whereas now the pizza or pasta shelves are often our first stop.

Giuseppe Conetta (on his birth certificate although he was always known as Joseph or Joe) was born on March 19, 1945, to Antonio and Margaret Conetta of Springfield Road, Glasgow, who had survived the Luftwaffe bombing of Clydeside and ran a newsagent's. Joe's sister Angela had been born four years earlier at the height of the Blitz. As with most Italian immigrants, Joe's dad Tony had been interned for part of the war as an "enemy alien" after Italy's dictator Mussolini made the worst decision of his life and sided with Hitler. The "internment" was a bit of a joke since every Glaswegian who knew Tony Conetta loved him and would have protected him had Hitler ever succeeded in his ambition of conquering Britain (as if he would ever have got beyond Hadrian's Wall).

Some of Joe's earliest memories, with the war over, were family holidays to Edinburgh and Portobello beach. Ironically, although he would later wean us away from our traditional fare, he had an early obsession, even as a toddler, with chips. His family insist that the first word he uttered was not mama or dada but "potato."

After leaving St Mungo's Academy in Bridgeton, he started working for his father aged 14, getting up at 4.30am before the shop opened at five to supply papers and cigarettes to workers headed for the shipyards. He recalled "three wee Glasgow women" who would be sitting on bags of coal waiting for their papers and fags when the shop opened. "Would the real Miss World please staun up?" he'd say as he handed their papers over. He had Glasgow humour from an early age.

He met his future wife Eleanora (Lee) Westwood after gate-crashing a party and pulling the usual line: "Hullo ther, hen, are ye dancin?" Whether or not she replied: "Naw, it's jist the way I'm staunin'" is not known but it was love at first sight, or at least love at the first time Joe stood on her foot. "They loved everything about each other, they were adventurous, loved to travel and took risks together," their son Tony said in his funeral eulogy. "He was transfixed by mum's vivacious good looks and effervescent personality and was devoted to her for the next 49 years."

The couple became engaged in 1967 at the famous Lomond Castle hotel on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond and married on May 28 the following year at St Columbkille's church in Rutherglen, the district where her dad ran a café. Joe, at the time, was working in a fish and chip shop but came to work with her in the café before opening his own. He recalled a woman customer who always came in carrying a plastic bag containing her first husband's ashes. It turned out either that her jealous second husband did not want to be alone at home with her first hubby's remains or she feared he would use them as an ashtray.

Joe Conetta went on to open the first two Di Maggio's restaurants with his best friend Mario Gizzi and within days, Glaswegians were queuing down the street to get a table for what Joe and Mario described as "casual dining." Their pasta dishes and pizza were to die for. The Di Maggio's chain is now run by Joe's son Tony and Mario Gizzi, son of Joe's original partner.

When Joe Conetta saw that his son and his business partner Mario Gizzi were doing OK, he did what most of us would do if we had the money. After retiring at the age of 55, he bought a farm in Lanarkshire, rode hourses, raised chicken, goats and pigs, including one he named Marcella - his daughter's name. She was not amused. "Coincidence," he insisted.

He then bought a house in France and a finca (ranch) in Spain he called La Grenota, in Alhaurin de le Torre, where he trained and rode horses along with some of Spain's finest horsemen. To get to and fro, he did not even consider Glasgow Airport. He jumped - over the years - into one of his Ferraris or Bentleys and hit the road - initially with his beloved wife Lee but, like most wives of ageing boy racers, she got terrified of his driving and later opted to fly, leaving him to indulge his passion for driving. Anyone of you who were passed by a Ferrari or Bentley between the tall trees of France, or on the magical highway from Bilbao to Andalucia will never know who that was. Although he could have afforded it, Joe Conetta was not a man to have a registration plate like JC1 or D1Magg10, if that could ever exist.

"Dad would drive from Glasgow to France, Italy or Spain, sometime all in the same week," his son Tony said in his eulogy. "By the shortest route possible. That would mean many lane changes, overtaking, setting his own pace, occasionally using the wrong lane, always fuelled by salt and vinegar crisps. I think he loved his driving so much because he was in charge of his own destiny when he was driving. As for his business success, he always said ... 'the harder you work, the luckier you get.' He took me to multiple sporting events, from F1 Grands Prix to the American football Superbowl."

Joe Conetta had a heart attack at Frankfurt airport but was flown home to Monklands hospital, Glasgow, where he passed away. He is survived by his wife Lee, son Tony, daughter Marcella and grandchildren Cristina, Gabriella, Elissia and Michael who adored him as their nonno (granddad). In his eulogy, Joe's son Tony said: "My dad was never afraid of dying. He always looked on death as the next great adventure."

PHIL DAVISON