Freddie Starr found dead aged 76 in his Spanish apartment
FREDDIE Starr was found dead at his home in Spain yesterday.
A carer discovered the 76-year-old comedian on the floor of his apartment on the Costa del Sol. It was reported that he was found naked.
Starr, who fled to Spain in 2015 after being hit with a £960,000 legal bill defending historical abuse charges, is believed to have died of natural causes.
The chain-smoker had battled with health problems and had a quadruple heart bypass following a heart attack in 2010.
Starr was one of the biggest stars of the 80s and 90s on shows such as The Freddie Starr Show and An Audience With Freddie Starr. He appeared on I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! in 2011. But he was quickly removed from the show by producers when he dramatically collapsed and fell ill, with showrunners admitting they thought he could die live on screen.
Born Freddie Fowell on Merseyside, after spells as a bricklayer and a boxer, he started out in showbusiness as part of the Merseybeat phenomenon alongside The Beatles as the lead singer of The Midniters.
He made his television breakthrough in the early 1970s on Opportunity Knocks and the Royal Variety Peformance and went on to become one of the main stars in the ITV sketch show Who Do You Do?
In 1986 he became the subject of one of the most famous newspaper headlines of all time: ‘Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster’.
The story came after Lea La Salle alleged Starr returned home from a performance at a Manchester nightclub and demanded she make him a sandwich – when she refused he allegedly went into the kitchen, put her pet hamster Supersonic between two slices and bread and proceeded to eat it.
However, in his autobiography Unwrapped in 2001, he denied it all and said: ‘I have never eaten or even nibbled a live hamster, gerbil, guinea pig, mouse, shrew, vole or any other small mammal.’
He faced bankruptcy in 2015 after losing a historic court case against 57-year- old Karin Ward, who claimed he groped her when she was 15. Instead of paying her legal fees and court costs as he was ordered to by the judge, Starr liquidated his assets and left the country.
He sold his home in Studley, Warwickshire, for almost £700,000 and moved to Mijas, near the Costa resort of Fuengirola. Spanish police said there was nothing to suggest Starr’s death was suspicious. But a post-mortem examination is expected to take place today in Malaga to rule out any possibility of a crime. Starr had a tumultuous romantic life – just three years ago his wife Sophie, who was nearly 40 years his junior, filed for divorce after she found love with another man. This was the last of his four marriages, and Starr leaves behind six children.
Comedian Bobby Davro led the tributes on Twitter last night, saying: ‘He was the funniest man I have ever seen.’ A post on Facebook and Twitter pages claiming to belong to Starr appeared to confirm the news. It said: ‘This is Freddie’s manager. Just to confirm Freddie has passed away. RIP to our greatest comedian of all time.’
‘I have never eaten a live hamster’