Did Adam Faith spy on Castro for MI6?
Singer ‘recruited by spook at the Savoy’
To most, the late Adam Faith was a Sixties teen idol, pop singer and actor.
But it has now been claimed that the Billy liar star had another, top secret job during his career – spying on Fidel Castro for MI6 in the late 1990s.
According to a close friend of Faith’s, he was asked to spy on Cuba’s communist leader during a visit to the country in 1997.
But the star, who in his later years went on to become an investor and financial journalist, discovered little more than that the dictator was a fan of his music.
Music producer David Courtney has claimed in his memoirs that Faith was chosen by the British secret service due to his business interests in Cuba. Courtney said he saw Faith approached by a ‘guy from MI6’ when he met him at the Savoy hotel in london.
‘he called me to one side and asked me to sit at a table across the way while he continued his meeting,’ he said.
‘I could see he had become more animated with his hands and nodding his head. After about 15 minutes he waved over to me to join them. We talked for a while and he left. I said to Adam “What was that all about?” “Well,” he said, “I am going to tell you something but you must never repeat it.” I agreed.
‘“I have been filming a travelogue series for the BBC in Cuba, and that guy is from MI6. They approached me and said they knew I had built up connections in havana and asked me to do some work for them there, basically spy for them in preparation for the post-Castro era”.’
Courtney told the Sunday Times that Faith met Castro, who died last year, on a subsequent visit and was terrified that he had been found out.
he said Faith described the encounter on his return, recounting how he was invited into a room, where Castro was sitting behind an ornate desk.
Faith reportedly told Courtney: ‘he looked up at me and said, “I know you”. he held up a copy of my first record in his hand and said to me in broken english: “What Do You Want If You Don’t Want Money?”’
Faith died of a heart attack in 2003 at the age of 62, and appears to have told only Courtney about his brief work as a spy, but Courtney is convinced the story was true. Courtney, who also worked with Paul McCartney, eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, became a friend of the star when he and Faith collaborated on leo Sayer’s first album.
The revelation follows the recent suggestion that richard Whiteley, the late former host of Countdown, was in the pay of MI5.