Tragic Pete Burns chillingly describes his near-death experience in the last interview before fatal cardiac arrest
PETE Burns chillingly revealed that dying was a ‘lovely feeling’ in his last interview before passing away.
The 57-year-old made the comments just weeks before his fatal cardiac arrest on October 23 – during a previously unseen interview on Channel 5.
The eighties pop star, whose top hit was You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) with Dead or Alive, was speaking about his near-death experience.
Pete previously revealed on Celebrity Botched Up Bodies that his life was put on the line as he underwent 300 operations to fix botched surgeries.
Pete told the cameras: “It was a lovely feeling dying, I can remember being in the hospital, all wired up to tubes and thinking, if only you’d take these tubes out, it feels so nice, it felt so, it felt like being in a bath of velvet.
“It was such a nice feeling, everything felt so soft and floppy and I wanted to go.”
Pete also explained that his obsession with surgery was pricked by a fear of ageing and looking like a ’65-year-old geezer’.
He added: “I’m not very comfortable with the idea, technically, of ageing, I’ll never look forever young, but I’ll look as best as I possibly can and I’ll look surreal.
“I’m going to take the step in the next 10 years of surreality because I’ll no longer look earthly.
“I don’t wanna look like a 65-year-old geezer you know and I can’t really see it happening.
“If people don’t think I can fall into what the norm is, that’s their problem and not mine.
“I’m not the norm, I’m not deluded. I’m not the boy-next-door, I’m the boy next door but one.
“I’m never going to fit in in that way, as I say, I live in a very confined, large and well-populated bubble and I’m happy that I am the norm in that bubble.”
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Pete, who appeared on the fourth series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, also discussed the high price of fame.
He said: “From a child I knew I didn’t have the face I wanted to have.
“My mother was a baroness. She was from Berlin, she was a silent movie actress and friends with Marlene Dietrich.
“So she knew all about film make-up and prosthetics and stuff like that and what they used to do in those days. And she taught me all that as a child.
“There was one point where my Mother was dying of lung cancer and a journalist dressed up as a nurse and got in the house to get a picture of her, dying of lung cancer and stuff like that and then you realise the fame’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
The footage was filmed over the summer, ahead of Pete’s appearance on Celebrity Botched Up Bodies – which aired on September 15.
His interview was not aired on the original show, and Channel 5 producers have also spoken to some of Pete’s nearest and dearest.
Boy George, who recently offered to pay for penniless pal Pete’s funeral, said: “I loved him as a kind of fellow weirdo. He’s someone that I had a lot of admiration for.
“He walked up to me in the seventies, and said - you’ve copied my look!”
Pete’s ex-husband Michael Simpson added: “It’s a very surreal situation. I can’t quite get my head around that Pete died a few weeks ago. It wasn’t in the plan. It’s early days, it’s two weeks.
“I’m hoping he’s somewhere, I don’t know, on some kind of journey now, just loving every minute, you know, if legacy will go on.
“His childhood was very colourful and his mother was certainly very encouraging of Pete’s flamboyance and individuality. To think freely, to be free and to be boundary-less.
“Pete’s relationship with Lynn I think (was) probably the most important relationship of both their lives.
“You know, it was like a destiny moment. Sometimes people are destined to meet.
“I wish he had a switch that he could have flicked it on and off to be seen and unseen in public.
“We don’t all, just because someone’s bought your records doesn’t mean you’re always going to be switched on to being thankful.”
Former Pop Idol judge Pete Waterman, who worked with Dead or Alive on their hit album Youthquake, which featured You Spin Me Round, was also interviewed.
He said: “This is a friend; this is almost, almost, like a son. He had the most wicked tongue in the world, I mean he could kill you from 30 yards off, you know he really did.
“But he had the heart the size of Liverpool. I mean, he was the most generous and kind bloke I ever met, he was a real gentleman, and I don’t use that word lightly, he really was, he was so sweet.
“Every artist, if they had 1 millionth of the personality of Pete Burns, they’d be superstars.
“He was well versed and well-read and was highly intelligent. He didn’t do it to have hits. He did it because that’s what he wanted to do.”
Politician George Galloway, who lived in the CBB house with Pete, said: “I had never met any quite like him before, or for that matter, since and anybody who’s met Pete Burns has never met anyone like him anyway.
“He said funnily enough, like I was like a father figure to him and when he died it was a surprise to me to learn that he was only 5 years younger than me.
“I will remember Pete Burns as a man who through 22 long days and nights, really made me laugh. I mean holding your sides, your stomach sore, laughs.
“Even when he was cruel, he was almost always, right, and was merely saying what other people might be thinking.”
Punk singer and actress Toyah Willcox, a friend of Pete’s, said: “I think Pete was one of my very favourite types of human being, he was a butterfly in the hurricane, and I just love people who live their lives like that.
“I would have loved more conversations with Pete. I mean I never held back, I always told him I thought he was beautiful and great and exceptional and just so interesting he made me want to turn the telly on.”
Pete Burns: The Last Interview is on Channel 5 tonight (Tuesday November 8) at 10pm.