Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
My George really didn’t want to live ..he’d had enough
LOVER ON MUSIC LEGEND’S LAST DAYS
GEORGE Michael had tried to kill himself four times before he was found dead on Christmas Day 2016, according to his ex-lover.
Fadi Fawaz claims the tortured singer stabbed himself 25 times while he was in rehab and hurled himself from a moving car on a motorway in another suicide bid.
He insisted George had sunk into a deep depression and had told him he no longer wanted to live.
The claims came as he opened up about finding the 53-year-old’s body tucked up in bed, not realising he was gone until he saw his fingers were blue.
And he said their relationship had been blighted by rows from the beginning over the singer’s prolific drug abuse.
Fadi, who is locked in a bitter feud with George’s family, claimed one of the suicide bids was the bizarre incident in May 2013 in which he plunged from his Range Rover on the M1 near St Albans.
George spent 10 days in hospital after being airlifted from the carriageway and sources said at the time that he had just been “trying to shut the door”.
But in an emotional statement on his Instagram account, Fadi said: “He has tried to kill himself four times, whilst in rehab he tried to stab himself 25 times.
POWERFUL
“He never told me how he did it when he was taken for three days... I would say, ‘Aren’t you glad May 16th didn’t happen’, referring to one suicide attempt, and he would say ‘No’. He wanted to die so badly and it was powerful to hear him say it. I think life stopped for him a long time ago. Everyone wanted him because of what and who he is.
“‘Everyone wants me alive’, is what he would say.”
Fadi, who met George in 2009, said he turned down a relationship at first because of the singer’s use of the drug GHB. The 45-year-old said: “I was so against GHB, I used to say to him, ‘I never want to find you dead in bed’. That was my biggest fear, to find him dead in bed as a result of this drug.
“Every day for about three months whilst at the house in Highgate, I would come down in the mornings and find him passed out in the chair or on the floor near the fire with his tea.
“This was in 2012. I told him he could never handle ‘G’. I questioned why he was doing it as he started falling asleep whilst we were out in public. I was told he fell asleep in the studio.”
Fadi also told of how George still took drugs after nearly dying from acute pneumonia in Austria during a 2011 tour, spending 12 days in a coma.
The singer collapsed before a show in Vienna and doctors were forced to perform an emergency tracheotomy.
Fadi said: “Whilst George was still skinny from his illness, I saw him with cocaine. George also had something brown. George told me he didn’t want to use. He wanted to clean his life but didn’t know how. He was never the same after the pneumonia.”
Fadi also described how George plunged into a deep depression. He said: “It was so severe and I didn’t know why
That was my biggest fear, to find him dead in bed as a result of this drug FADI FAWAZ ON TROUBLED GEORGE’S USE OF THE PSYCHOACTIVE DRUG GHB
he was so sad. He was using valium but it was not enough and he rang the doctor for more. I noticed that in the last few weeks when I came into a room, George would start shaking, so much so that I thought he was giving me a reason to stay way from him.”
Fadi previously claimed he never saw George on Christmas Eve 2016, telling the Mirror: “I fell asleep in my car and I never saw him that night.” But in the new post, he said they were both in the house in Goring, Oxon, all day – but never saw each other.
Fadi claimed he left to pick up a sandwich at noon and went back to bed until 5pm, believing George to be asleep in another bedroom. He said George’s door had been left ajar and he kept going to check if it had opened further – but decided to let him sleep.
He said: “George and I have this thing where if we have upset each other, he would refuse to come down and I would refuse to go up.”
Fadi claims he ate dinner by himself, then woke up on Christmas Day to find George had still not left his room.
He said: “I decided to see if he was in. Because of past experience, I was worried too. I had always told him, ‘Don’t do this to me’. I looked in his room and saw that he was in bed.”
Fadi said he went in three times to see if he was breathing but did not approach George’s body until the third visit. He said he found his lover with his fist clenched against his face and his body tucked under the covers.
Fadi went on: “I couldn’t see any vomit. I touched him but he was cold. I couldn’t tell that he was dead until I saw his fingers were blue. I was shaking him and saying ‘George, George’ but he was dead.”
A paramedic told Fadi that George had been dead for some time, which he said made him “feel little”.
He said: “Nothing was out of place in the room. There was no sign that he struggled or anything.
“The bed was so neat. Everything was perfect.”
A coroner ruled that George died of natural causes – dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and fatty liver – and ruled out an inquest.
Fadi did not go into further detail about the aftermath of George’s death or his reported feud with the family.
The photographer, not thought to have been in the will, previously said he was willing to sell George’s belongings, saying: “It’s a way so I can survive till we solve the problems with his family and lawyer.”
Fadi is still believed to be staying in George’s £5million home in Regent’s Park, London.
George’s lawyer was contacted for comment on the suicide bid claims.
He tried to end it all four times and stabbed himself 25 times when in rehab I couldn’t tell he was dead, he looked normal, then I saw his fingers were blue