He became a recluse because he couldn’t bear people to see how he looked
GEORGE MICHAEL saw almost no one. Beloved, it seems, by the whole world, he had become genuinely reclusive over the past five years. He was last seen on Christmas Eve, watching a torchlight procession from his windows as it reached the church which is next to his house in picturesque Goring-onThames, Oxfordshire.
One of his few regular visitors was his childhood best friend, the singer and songwriter David Austin. He would also periodically see his sisters, Melanie and Yioda. Only those closest to him were permitted to penetrate George Michael’s private screen.
On Christmas Eve, George didn’t go to midnight mass at the local church, although he had been in previous years. George’s boyfriend, Australian celebrity hair stylist Fadi Fawaz, had been seen in the village earlier that day.
On Christmas Day, George was found dead in bed in his spectacular riverside home. So why did he hide away from the world?
Partly it was because George Michael hated to be seen as anything other than the slender, perfectly coiffed pop star he was in his youth.
‘George was a total perfectionist, always, but he had totally lost confidence,’ says one source close to his management. Even photos released for his last album, Symphonica, in 2014 were old. Aged 53, he could be ‘horribly self-conscious’ about how he looked and about his weight gain.
HE ALSO fretted about the very visible scars on his head and neck, caused when he fell out of a car on the M1 in 2013 in what may have been a suicide bid while high on drugs. How he would have hated the so-called ‘last photographs’ of himself looking portly and middle-aged. They were taken on a night out at a restaurant near his home in September with former boyfriend Kenny Goss and other friends.
He and art dealer Kenny, who had a romance lasting more than a decade, were said to be thinking about rekindling their love affair when he died.
Sadly, though, George was in the grip of a long depressive crisis, and Kenny, 58, wasn’t with him at the end. As well as his friend David Austin, it’s thought he also saw a photographer pal called Caroline, and his personal assistant.
Whether this crisis was caused by his drug dependency, or fuelled by it, is an open question. But family members long believed that his addictions would claim his life one way or another.
Cousin and close pal Andros Georgiou exclaimed yesterday: ‘My biggest fear has come true.’
Georgiou, understood to have been estranged from the star after Georgiou’s wife Jackie last year revealed the family’s anguish about his addiction to crack cocaine, booze and marijuana, added: ‘I lost a brother-in-arms. I can’t believe what has happened. He was a very special person to everyone he met.’
He went on: ‘Please, someone tell me this is not true, Yog can’t be gone.’ (Yog is the nickname the Wham! star’s family uses, from his Greek first name, Georgios.)
One friend told me: ‘George really was a cat with nine lives. I thought he was a goner several times. You can’t go on as recklessly as he did with drugs and all the rest of it and get away with it all the time.’
Another recalled seeing George earlier this year and said: ‘He seemed all right, not completely well, but all right.’
I’m told George impulsively gave away his Range Rover car to another friend a few months ago. George had had a chequered career as a motorist, and even served a four-week prison sentence in 2010 for crashing while under the influence of drugs.
His publicist, Cindi Berger, insists he was ‘not ill’ at the time of his death on Christmas Day, and manager Michael Lippman said in a statement that ‘heart failure’ was the reason.
He clearly had health problems. There was an unexplained collapse in 2014 which had led to emergency treatment at his house in London, followed by a stay in hospital.
Family members said he went on to spend a year in a £190,000-amonth clinic in Zurich attempting to beat serious drug addictions including a taste for crack cocaine and crystal meth.
Jackie Georgiou said at the time: ‘It’s crack, it’s marijuana, it’s drink, it’s coke . . . I’m petrified he will die.’ She added: ‘He’s not the same. The spark has gone. He is not himself after his drug use.’
He moved to Oxfordshire after his discharge from the clinic last year.
It is surely significant that he left his London home, in Highgate, where Kate Moss was a neighbour, and drugs and casual sex on nearby Hampstead Heath were an everpresent temptation. (He told one interviewer that his daily routine involved getting up, smoking a spliff of marijuana, and going onto the Heath to pick up a partner.) The question, which will eventually be determined by an inquest, is whether he did, indeed, leave his addictions behind — or whether they claimed his life.
Certainly, local Goring residents found him reclusive and painfully shy. His London friends had complained that he shut himself away and saw nobody — and in the countryside things were no different.
Malcolm Allport, 80, said: ‘He had a housekeeper who used to come up, but the house was shut up a lot of the time. We knew he was staying here for Christmas, there were deliveries before, but no other cars. We thought he was probably spending it by himself.’
The manager of the Catherine Wheel pub in the village said: ‘We have not seen him for a while. I last saw him about a month ago in The Miller Of Mansfield [another local pub]. I think he was with his manager and they were having a meal.
‘He used to come in here, but he kept himself to himself and if he
was recognised or bothered by anyone, then he wouldn’t go back to the place.’
She added: ‘He used to go out and about a lot more when he first moved into the village, but in recent years he hasn’t really been seen.
‘He had changed over the years, got a lot bigger and wore glasses. He was very self-conscious. He just did not look like George Michael any more. It’s very sad.
‘We are all gutted. I went down to lay a candle outside his house with a group and they said the last time he was seen was watching the torchlight procession on Christmas Eve from the window.
‘After we closed the pub yesterday we went past and saw a paramedic and a police car parked outside about 2pm. Everyone was talking about it and wondering if it was just a minor accident or something, but then we saw on the news he was dead.’
Another neighbour said: ‘I hardly ever saw him about anywhere. He was around more when he first bought the place, but as the years went on we saw him less and less frequently.’
Matt Wibberley, from The Miller Of Mansfield pub, said: ‘We last saw him around three to four weeks ago when he came in with someone else. We haven’t seen him since then.’
Church warden David Beddall, 77, said: ‘He came to the midnight service last year, but he didn’t come this year.
‘We used to see the housekeeper and the gardeners come every Wednesday, but that was about it, he came through the gates and kept himself to himself.
‘He decorated the garden with Christmas lights, so we knew he was there, but we didn’t see him.’
Even though the singer seemed determined to stay out of public view, there were professional plans in the pipeline.
He had sanctioned the re-release of a deluxe 25th anniversary edition of the 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1. That was slated to appear in September, then delayed to November, and is said to be coming out early next year.
There was also talk of an almost completed solo album.
However, as long ago as the summer of 2014 George was said to be writing and recording, and ‘almost ready’ with a new album. But again there was no sign of a much delayed project.
Tentative plans for some live performances were mooted early this year, in February. However no dates were booked. It is possible that, with his record of health problems, promoters were not able to get artist insurance.
His many fans were delighted he was even thinking about a comeback tour, though, as he had avoided public scrutiny since almost dying of pneumonia during a tour in 2011.
There were plans to release a documentary about the making of the Listen Without Prejudice album, which may be ready in March 2017.
He had apparently agreed to narrate the film, which would tell the story of his grief over the Aidsrelated death of lover Anselmo Feleppa in 1993, his fallout with Sony over the marketing of the album, and his failed court case against the label which followed.
The album is a triumph, but is also famous for his insistence that he would not appear on the cover.
NOr did he want to appear in the video for Freedom, instead putting out a promo featuring models Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Tatjana Patitz lip-syncing to his voice.
His renewed friendship with Kenny Goss was said to be a driving force in all of this activity.
A friend said: ‘There have been some really dark periods for George, especially during the time apart from Kenny. When he was with him, there always seemed to be something keeping him on track.
‘It was never straightforward, but Kenny was the love of his life and really good for him. There were a lot of false starts with George’s career over the past few years.
‘He kept on getting close to doing something again, but simply hadn’t been ready.’
Now, of course, those plans amount to nothing. Of all George’s friends, Sir Elton John, particularly, will be devastated. For a decade he attempted to persuade him to go into rehab, without success.
‘Elton tried quietly for years to help him and George would then ridicule him in interviews,’ said a mutual friend. ‘The frustration was that nobody could get to him.’