George Michael’s mum kept him stable… when she died, he embraced the dark
It may all have been different if George's mother had lived longer, says late star's former pal and the co-author of his autobiography
YOU understood where George Michael’s personality came from the moment you met his mother.
Lesley Panayiotou was a warm, kind-hearted woman whose life was built on the foundation of family.
She was friendly, quick to smile and unpretentious. Even as George’s first solo album, Faith, racked up sales of 20million and George had some claim to being the biggest star on the planet, Lesley was down to earth.
Just like her son.
They even looked like each other. I met the rest of George’s family — his older sisters Yioda and Melanie, his father Jack — at various performances and parties (I remember George’s lavish 30th birthday party was held at Jack’s torch-lit stud farm in Hertfordshire).
But in the countless hours that I spent at his home in those golden years of the Nineties, I only saw one member of his family there — his mum.
George’s home at the time was an open-plan house in Oak Hill Park, a private road in Hampstead, North London.
Lesley would come round to do some unpaid housekeeping — the house was covered in wall-to-wall snow-white carpet that George’s Labrador, a bitch called Hippy, was busy destroying.
But, most of all, Lesley was there to see her son.
George had been a huge star in Wham! but Faith was taking his career to another level.
It was strange to watch someone become so globally famous so quickly. I remember he once showed me a brand new Aston Martin parked in his garage which I don’t think he ever drove, favouring his old Range Rover to transport Hippy for her daily walks on Hampstead Heath.
George remained remarkably unaffected by superstardom
The house in Oak Hill Park was surrounded by the silence of affluent London but the entire world was watching George’s every move now.
As we stood having a cup of tea in the kitchen, there always seemed to be at least one photographer crawling through the bushes on the steep hill behind the house.
In his mid-20s, George had achieved a level of success most stars never get anywhere close to, and yet he remained remarkably unaffected by superstardom.
It seemed strange that he should be untouched by the madness swirling all around until you met Lesley — his mum and his rock. And then you understood.
George got so much from Lesley. His stability, his instinctive kindness, his quiet determination (Lesley had defied her English family to marry George’s dad, Kyriacos “Jack” Panayiotou).
Then in 1997 she was gone, dead from cancer at the age of 60 — and George’s life would never be so sweet again.A year after Lesley’s death, George and I sat by an open fire in the middle of winter — Hippy between us gnawing what remained of the white carpet — and George casually mentioned that he was now smoking 25 spliffs of cannabis every day.
George was a man who always had secrets, but drugs were never one of them. He assured me that he was on top of this new habit and — even at that moment — I would have bet my life that George Michael would never ruin himself with drugs.
The drugs that he talked to me about did not recede from his life — they took it over
Too sane, I believed. Too stable. Too much Lesley’s son.
And, of course, it did not work out that way. The drugs that he talked to me about in 1998 did not recede from his life — they took it over.
I have no idea if the rumours about heroin use are true, but I don’t see how anyone could reasonably dispute that drugs of one kind or another robbed George Michael of his health, career, happiness and talent, and ultimately his life.
I fell out with him not long after that conversation by the fire. We had talked for hours with the tape recorder running but, when I returned home, the phone kept ringing as George asked me to remove items that he deemed too sensitive. Curiously, not the stuff about Anselmo Feleppa, the love of his life dying of Aids, and not the confession about drug use. But there were things he had said about Princess Diana that he wanted to withdraw.
I happily complied — I considered him my friend — but the phone did not stop ringing.
In the end I lost my patience with him. I felt as if I was being treated like a hired hand. He no doubt felt like the big star whose openness was being exploited.
After 13 years of friendship, we never spoke again.
When the news of George’s death came through on Boxing Day, it was endlessly sad but far from unexpected. Watching from a distance, it felt like my old friend had been killing himself for years.
If they live long enough, most big stars move away from bad drugs, sordid sex and wrecked health for a cleaner, saner, less self-destructive existence. They start out as Keith Richards and end up as Keith Chegwin. But not George.
By the time George did four weeks in jail for driving under the influence of drugs, he was 47 years old. As someone who had known him from the days of Wham! I hardly recognised the bloated, drug-addled figure who so recklessly planted his car in the window of Snappy Snaps on Hampstead High Street.
By the time he died this week, it felt like he was a total stranger.
It was only when the stories began to emerge about his epic generosity that I saw somewhere deep inside this sick, 16st old man, there was the same George that I had known and loved.
Because I remember George’s generosity, too. After I interviewed him a couple of times for The Face and we discovered that we enjoyed getting drunk together and he could trust me, I suggested we write his life story together one day.
I had in mind when he was 60. “Let’s do it now,” he said, aged 26.
We decided to split the proceeds 50/50 — an unprecedented deal for a ghostwriter and a superstar.
Only when stories emerged about his epic generosity did I recognise the George I'd known and loved
When his US managers heard about our arrangement, they went through their LA roofs, informing my agent that Hollywood would freeze over before their illustrious client split the proceeds with a nobody like me.
“You don’t even have to think about it any more,” George Michael told me. “Just write the book.” George slapped his managers into line. We duly split the considerable proceeds between us. Even now, all these years on, his generosity takes my breath away.
Where did that beautiful man go?
Perhaps it would have all been different if his mother had lived longer. Yes, we all lose our mothers, but George found it harder to carry on than most people.
It’s not that I believe Lesley would have stopped George sliding into the self-inflicted oblivion of drugs. He would have stopped himself. He would have been too ashamed to become a drug wreck if his mum was alive.
Most big stars retreat from the darkness. But after his mum died, George ran towards it.
Anselmo Feleppa, his Brazilian lover, had died of an Aids-related brain haemorrhage in 1993, and this confirmed to George Michael that he was gay and not, as he had believed since his teenage years, somewhere on the bisexual spectrum.
After Anselmo, there would be no more female lovers — there were certainly a few before — but George would remain in the closet.
Contrary to popular belief, he did not come out of the closet when he was arrested “engaging in a lewd act” in 1998.
Before that he had spoken openly — and on the record — to me about Anselmo Feleppa in our last interview. But nobody cared until that cop caught him in a public toilet in Beverly Hills.
George’s explanation for hiding his homosexuality was that he did not want to worry his mother about Aids. I also think his vanity purred when he cavorted with the world’s great (female) beauties in his videos. But from the start he insisted the George Michael in the videos was a fictional creation, as made up as Ziggy Stardust.
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And now he is gone.
My phone started ringing on Boxing Day but I had nothing to tell them, all those radio stations and newspapers, because the 53-year-old man who died in Goring, Oxford, was a total stranger.
But I remember the George who was young and happy and healthy.
I remember him when he was 21 years old in Wham! with mobs of girls chasing him.
I remember him when his songwriting genius made him as big a star as Michael Jackson — and I remember him preparing tea and biscuits as we sat down for another talk in Hampstead, Hippy the Labrador chewing the white carpet between us.
I remember that beautiful boy, that generous man, whom I proudly called my friend.
And I miss him today.