I miss George a lot... we should all remember him by helping suffering kids
GERI TRIBUTE TO FRIEND SHE LOST
Last Christmas morning Geri Horner and her daughter Bluebell sat under their sparkling tree and opened the beautiful presents lovingly chosen and wrapped by their ever-generous friend George Michael.
Hours later they learned the terrible news that George was dead.
“It was hideous,” she says quietly. “Just terrible. George had bought clothes for Bluey and he always sent my mother a fantastic food hamper. He was so kind. And then...” It was a day where everything changed.
But now the former Spice Girl is determined to take the tragedy and sadness of George’s loss and transform it into a positive force to help children who are suffering.
“I think about him a lot, as anyone would who has lost a close friend,” says Geri slowly.
“I think what I’ve realised from his passing is that the world moves very fast and that’s why we have to do the best we can while we are here. I am very conscious of that.”
It’s this realisation which has led Geri to take on a role as an ambassador for the NSPCC and Childline.
And today Geri throws her support around the Mirror’s Light Up Christmas for Children campaign with the NSPCC.
Our ambition is to help raise £500,000 to ensure more calls and online messages to Childline are being answered.
At the moment the voices of 20 kids every hour are going unheard as Childline struggles to meet growing demands.
Following his death at 53 it emerged George Michael had given millions of pounds to the charity.
“After George died I started doing some research and that was when I found out how much he’d done for Childline,” says Geri.
“I met up with Esther Rantzen and she was the one who told me how much he had given and it blew me away. I thought it was just inspirational.”
As a teenager growing up in Watford, Herts, Geri was a huge Wham fan and adored George.
When her own pop career in The Spice Girls exploded she met the star at an awards show and quickly they became firm friends.
And after she left the band in 1998 and again when she gave birth to Bluebell in 2006 as a single mother, George was there to support her.
He opened up his home to her and did everything he could to help.
“I think there are pockets of time in your life when things aren’t going well and that’s when you find out who you are and who your friends are,” Geri says.
“George was always there for me. He was very kind to me.”
So while the scale of George’s secret support for Childline may have surprised Geri, his generosity of spirit did not.
She knew too just how much her old pal adored kids.
“George loved children,” she says, sitting in the cosy kitchen of her North London home surrounded by pictures of Bluebell, now 11 and her baby Monty.
Geri gave birth to Monty three weeks after her friend’s death and he has George as a middle name.
“George used to come here when Bluebell had her birthday party,” says Geri. “When she was six years old it was me and about 10 children and George and he was totally into it – he loved seeing children having fun.
“He was very, very sweet with them and just liked their innocence I think.”
After George’s death Geri met Childline founder Esther Rantzen and learned more about its work and visited the charity’s London HQ.
“It is a massive openplan office full of people, most of whom are giving up their time voluntarily to help children who need someone to talk to.
“These people are inspirational and a great reminder of how much light is in the world when we can often feel there is just so much darkness.
“During the evening and night it is difficult to get enough volunteers and that is often when kids are desperately in need of someone to talk to. This is why Childline so needs money to answer the calls.
“On the wall of the offices a board shows how many children are in a queue waiting for their call to be answered.
“They know if a call isn’t answered in about three rings the child will often give up. That is devastating. It’s why this charity so needs our support.” The calls coming into the Childline centre that day – and every day – ranged from less serious to truly traumatic.
There are calls on family troubles, bullying and a whole new range of anxieties created by the digital world.
“I heard something recently that in a survey 50% of children said they wished digital media didn’t exist,” says Geri. “And that’s
I think George led me to Childline. It’s like it was meant to be
awful”. She added: “When I was a kid there would be bullying of course but you went home at the end of the day and there was respite from the bully.
“That’s not there nowadays. It can be constant for some kids.
“There are many children who just don’t have anyone to talk to about how they are feeling.
“Sometimes they don’t have that language in their family to talk about emotions or there’s a generational gap in understanding. And that’s why Childline is brilliant because it is saying ‘We care and you matter and whatever is going on in your life you are not alone. That can be life saving’.”
There have clearly been times in Geri’s past that she too felt very alone.
But now with a happy marriage to Red Bull Formula One racing boss Christian Horner, who has a daughter Olivia, two children of her own, a strong and supportive mother and a gang of great mates, those days are behind her.
“I feel I am lucky and I have got people who are there for me. Life is never perfect for anyone but I try to look at the positives and focus on them.”
George’s death has made Geri reassess how she spends her life and juggles her work commitments.
“Time is the most valuable thing we have,” she says.
“I want to spend it well. I want to be present as a mother and with Monty while he is little and with Bluebell.”
But she is also determined to carry on working too. Filming is about to start for a new Saturday night show to be screened in the New Year. She is also writing another children’s book.
Amid it all remains a determination to do what she can to carry on George’s work for children who are struggling.
“I didn’t ask to get involved with Childline but it has come to me,” she says.
“It’s like George passing the baton to me. I think he has led me to it, it was meant to be.”