Mario Zeppetelli at Casa Italiana where Arsenal filmed a message for new defender Riccardo Calafiori

TO lovely Little Italy, and a social club which is having a sudden renaissance after being featured in both a social media welcome message to Arsenal’s newest footballer and a video promoting perfume on Instagram.

Casa Italiana San Vincenzo Pallotti opened on Clerkenwell Road in 1960 as a meeting place for Italian families, at a time when the surrounding neighbourhoods were known as London’s Little Italy.

Today the club’s pebble-dash walls and £3 Peronis feel more like rural Italy than Clerkenwell Road, which is perhaps what appealed to the PR team at Arsenal Football Club as it searched for an “authentic” venue to film a welcome video for their new signing, Rome-born Riccardo Calafiori.

In the one-minute clip a man sits in Casa Italiana speaking in English about his lifelong support for Arsenal and ending with the line: “Riccardo [Calafiori], benvenuto alla famiglia dei Gooners.”

Casa Italiana committee member Mario Zeppetelli, who grew up in Highbury and worked behind the bar at the club when he was a teenager in the 1970s, told Harrington: “It was quite hush hush, we didn’t know what it was for until after the video came out.

“They ended up using the father of a guy who works in PR at Arsenal, rather than an actor. He came to the club when he was young, like me, so that was a nice touch.”

When the Arsenal production team needed an extra to sip coffee in the background at the last minute, Casa Italiana regular John Fulgoni agreed to step in, despite being a Spurs fan.

Riccardo Calafiori and Casa Italiana San Vincenzo Pallotti 

Another social media video, filmed at the club by perfume company Ffern earlier this year, has also contributed to an unexpected publicity boom.

“In the last three months it’s just been mayhem,” Mr Zeppetelli said. “We’ve been getting so many email inquiries from people wanting to become members it’s become a full-time job for us to manage them.”

Mr Zeppetelli moved from Sicily to London with his parents in 1961 at the age of three and has been coming to Casa Italiana for most of his life. “In those days, it would be 11 o’clock Mass next door [at St Peter’s Italian Church], buy mortadella and pasta in the shop downstairs, come up here for a coffee and then go home to eat. That was a Sunday thing as a family.”

Casa Italiana still supports Italians in London and the surrounding community, through craft classes for kids and an affordable two-course meal for pensioners on Tuesday lunchtimes, followed by dancing courtesy of an 80-year-old DJ who plays Italian music from his laptop.

But Mr Zeppetelli is motivated to keep Casa Italiana going for the next generation, too.

A crowdfunder set up by Ffern has raised nearly £15,000 to help the club replace its kitchen, and its committee plans to extend opening hours over the weekend to encourage young people to meet their friends here, like Mr Zeppetelli himself used to.

“One thing is for certain,” he said, “we don’t want it to close at any stage.”

Maybe Harrington shouldn’t reveal his little secret, but, hey, whisper it quietly: Mr Zeppetelli is a Chelsea fan.