Ex-lover speaks out
How he tried to save George Michael
George Michael might have been one of the world’s most iconic pop stars, but that didn’t matter a jot to his longtime lover.
All Texan art dealer Kenny Goss wanted was for the “Faith” singer to stay alive and he became so desperate that he flushed his soulmate’s secret stash of hard drugs down the toilet whenever he found it.
The pair split in 2011 – six years before George was found dead at his English country mansion – and the devastated 58-year-old revealed last week that when they were together, he constantly worried about George’s intake of crack cocaine and ecstasy, and his 25-joints-a-day pot habit.
Heartbroken Kenny tells, “I’d find the drugs and flush everything down the toilet, thinking, ‘If I just get rid of it, he won’t get more.’ He was absent-minded, so would
just think he’d lost them.”
Kenny has broken his silence to pay homage to the “kind and generous” man to whom he dedicated 15 years of his life.
George, 53, was found lifeless last Christmas morning by his boyfriend Fadi Fawaz, 43. His body remained in the morgue for 94 days awaiting extensive toxicology reports, but his death was finally ruled to be from natural causes.
In the first glimpse into the star’s very private funeral, attended by 50 family and friends on March 29, Kenny says he didn’t cry. Instead, he pictured George in his prime, wearing “an amazing suit with his Cartier watch on”, and placed his hand on the coffin, feeling reassured his ex was now resting in peace.
Fadi under fire
No celebrities were invited to the hour-long farewell. Former Spice Girl Geri Horner paid her respects beforehand in private. There were no hymns, no photographs of George and none of his songs were played.
Kenny says Fadi, who came under criticism for not calling emergency services until an hour after finding George’s body, was snubbed by the singer’s family. The celebrity hairdresser, who had been in a relationship with George for five years, arrived late and while Kenny sat with relatives, Australian-born Fadi was seated with friends and wasn’t mentioned in the speeches.
During their time together, Kenny and George had talked about having a civil ceremony to celebrate their love, but never got around to it. The
pair met in 1996 at an upmarket Beverly Hills spa, where George asked Kenny out for dinner. “He didn’t know if I was gay, so he didn’t mention anything gay. Then, on the third meal, he definitely did! I fancied him. He was incredibly cute.”
George had been a star for more than a decade, but was not “out” about his sexuality. They had an open relationship and hid their love for two years, until George was famously busted cruising for sex in a Beverly Hills toilet in 1998.
When George phoned him from jail, Kenny asked, “Darling, what happened? Did you get a DUI?” George replied, “If only.”
After making bail, George refused to say what he’d been arrested for until they got home. Kenny told him, “Oh, darling, I don’t think it is going to be that big of a deal. You’ll get away with it.” His lover responded, “I’m not going to get away with it.”
The next morning, they awoke to find helicopters above their house. Kenny quipped, “I think you are probably right.”
George – who burst on to the world stage in the ’80s pop duo Wham! before forging a successful solo career – was happiest hanging at home in his grey flannel pyjama bottoms, watching Coronation Street and eating tubs of ice cream, reveals Kenny. “The man on stage being George Michael was a stranger to me. He liked being behind closed doors.”
When they argued, it was “about stupid things”, like losing the TV remote or when George rearranged the furniture without Kenny’s say-so. It was George’s spiralling drug problem and Kenny’s issue with alcohol that spelled the end of their relationship, although they stayed in touch.
When Kenny’s phone showed an incoming call from George’s house last December 25, he answered with, “Merry Christmas, Michael,” only to hear the musician’s manager tell him his former lover had passed away.
Earlier this year, a griefstricken Kenny consulted a clairvoyant to contact George, but he confesses, “I felt ridiculous … I quickly realised she’d been researching me. She was telling me stuff that was already out there.”
George’s downward spiral in the last years of his life is well documented. In 2013, he fell out of his chauffeur-driven Range Rover, travelling at 110km per hour, an incident many believed was a suicide attempt.
Kenny chooses to believe it was not. Following his funeral, George was buried in a corner of London’s Highgate Cemetery, next to his mother Lesley, who died in 1997. His grave is marked with a simple cross, surrounded by his favourite white roses. “I’m now happy that George is at rest with his mum,” says Kenny.