When he was 13, growing up in Puglia, southern Italy, he told his parents he was going to stay with a friend for the summer. Instead, he rented a room nearby and went to work on a construction site.
With the money he saved he bought a secondhand Aprilia 125 Six Days trail bike. “It was a beauty,” he recalls. He had to keep it at a friend’s house – his parents disapproved of two things in particular: their son working, and their son owning a motorbike.
Inevitably they found out, and there was a brief family crisis but eventually they gave in. Each year Pepe would work, and each year he would upgrade to a better bike.
The police knew him well. “I had fun being chased by the police. They never caught me – I would always get off the road and they couldn’t follow me.” Usually they would meet him at home and give him a ticking-off, but after all, this was a young Italian doing what young Italians were expected to do.
By 1996, a 24-year-old Pepe has moved to London, working in hotels. Up until then, motocross and enduro bikes had been his preference (he’s had two cars in his life, and disliked both of them). But in the Big Smoke he fell in love with Ducati – the ultimate Italian road and racing bike.
Pepe has never raced bikes, apart from informally with friends, but he did take bikes to Brands Hatch racetrack. One time was a bit of a disaster: coming off the straightaway where he had hit “exactly 169.9 mph” [273 kmh], he braked too late for the next bend and the bike went away from under him.
Pepe was unhurt – “I’ve never been hurt”, he says – but the B500,000 bike was a total loss.
But he’s stuck with Ducatis since then. His latest is a slightly modified 848 Evo superbike, one of a handful in Thailand, and one of just two in Phuket. Price tag new: B928,000.
He’s fitted new mufflers and tweaked the electronic control unit so that the 850cc V-twin engine pushes out 155 bhp for a top speed of 260 kmh and a 1-100 time of three seconds.
“It’s a completely different bike,” he says.
The day he got it he took it for a little run, from Phuket to the Samui ferry at Don Sak and back, taking the old road on the way out.
“It’s so much fun on all those bends. There’s no traction control or ABS, so you have to feel what it’s going to do.”
He was taking it easy on the way out – “I didn’t do more than 220 kmh, at 7,000 rpm.” On the way back he took the new highway for some straight line speed. “I hit 240 at 8,000 rpm.”
No police have chased him yet. And after all, he’s still an Italian guy doing what Italian guys are expected to do.