Freud’s pub punch-up with brother over funeral plans
THE only time that all 14 of Lucian Freud’s acknowledged offspring ever encountered each other was, reputedly, at the celebrated artist’s funeral in 2011.
A similar, sombre gathering had seemed possible next week when the family bids farewell to Jane McAdam Freud, the first of the siblings to die.
But I can reveal any hope of that is over — extinguished on Thursday night by an extraordinary punchup in a London pub which has left one of Freud’s five sons on the cusp of reporting his brother to the police.
Yet there had been no inkling of flying fists when
Alex Boyt — Freud’s only son by Suzy Boyt — got talking to painter Paul McAdam Freud, the elder of Freud’s two sons by Katherine McAdam and brother of sculptress Jane, whose death, aged 64, I disclosed earlier this month.
‘They were standing close to the door, chatting very amicably,’ recalls an eyewitness at the Royal Exchange pub in Paddington, where Thursday nights have become newly fashionable, thanks to Paul Simenon, bassist for punk band The Clash.
‘There’s a DJ set by Simenon every Thursday which attracts a bohemian crowd reliving their youth,’ explains my informant, adding that Bella Freud — one of Freud’s daughters by publican’s daughter Bernardine Coverley — is a Thursday regular.
This time, though, the family contingent was just the two half-brothers – Alex ‘in a blazer and cream coloured cords and loafers’ and Paul, ‘about 5ft 10in and stockier’, wearing ‘a pork pie hat and a rather loud shirt’.
There was no doubting the men’s blood ties. ‘ There’s a striking similarity in the nose and face,’ adds the witness, who explains that the mood changed suddenly and explosively when Paul asked Alex if he would be attending Jane’s funeral.
‘Alex said, “Look, I only met her once; I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to go”.’
He didn’t have the chance to say anything else. ‘Paul punched him — a right to his left jaw — so hard he flew out through the pub door. He would have been knocked to the ground if it hadn’t been for the crowd drinking outside.’
Alex, born in 1957, two years before Paul, ‘didn’t fight back’ — to the latter’s fury. ‘Paul was going for him. He needed to be held back.’
Alex, who tells me he hadn’t seen Paul ‘for years’, crisply summarises the encounter. ‘ Out of the blue he punched me then disappeared. [I] might go to the police, might not.’
Paul declines to comment. In common with all Freud’s children by McAdam, he was omitted from his father’s £42 million will.
But he’s evidently inherited a pugilistic streak from Lucian, who once remarked that he had ‘a lot of fights’ because ‘people said things to me to which I felt the only reply was to hit them’.