Grave - Freddie Starr (9th January 1943 to 9th May 2019)

Most of the entertainers from my childhood have died - Les Dawson, Larry Grayson, Bernard Manning, Frank Carson, etc. Here I am at the grave of another one who seemed to be on television through the 70, 80s and 90s. The thing I remember about Freddie was that he didn't eat meat (when I stopped in the 80s the only famous veggies I knew were Paul McCartney and Martin Shaw.) Freddie didn't drink either after seeing his dad's violence when drunk.

Here I am at his grave (note the star.) This was the penultimate grave I was visiting that day in Liverpool before nipping onto the motorway to get back for a curry and some television. I found the grave near the perimeter of a sprawling cemetery. Blimey the Freddie from all those programmes was at my feet. He was always edgy and unpredictable compared - he might throw live maggots in the audience or use a golf club to whack eggs off the stage. This grave isn’t far from Huyton where he was born - one of seven children. There would have been eight as Freddie was a twin but the other died.

His dad was a bricklayer who was often without work but still had enough money to get drunk. When drunk he beat his kids. Once he broke Freddie’s legs and the poor lad became mute and was taken into care. A poor start. From 12 he started performing in pubs and clubs. At 19 he was the singer of pop group The Midniters and spent time in Hamburg’s nightclubs (around the same time as The Beatles.) Aged 24 he found his feet having been part of a team that won Opportunity Knocks. He’d found his placed impersonating various singers and Adolf Hitler and this led to a successful career (won’t go into it here) on stage and television. Over three decades he earned many millions of pounds from his zany edgy shows but he was financially feckless.

One of the most famous headlines in Britain is "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster". He had been staying at his friend Vince McCaffrey’s and after returning from a performance in Manchester asked Vince’s girlfriend to make him a sandwich. When she refused he went into the kitchen and put her pet hamster Supersonic between two slices of bread and proceeded to eat it. I knew Vince who told me Freddie only pretended to eat it.

Aged 67 he suffered a major heart attack resulting in quadruple heart bypass surgery. The next year he was part of I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here but withdrew for health reasons. He was 72 when he finished his last tour and his last ever performance was at the Princes Theatre in Clacton-On-Sea.

He spent his final few years living in a townhouse in Mijas in Spain. Newspapers reported a bloated, wheelchair-ridden, chain-smoking, penniless recluse who - despite fives wives and six children - had only a carer to look after him. On the day he died his carer had breakfast with him then went to the shops in the afternoon leaving Freddie watching the news with his cat Charlie on his knee. When she returned she saw his naked cold dead body on the floor. He'd died of a heart attack aged 76. At the time it’s thought he owed a £1 million legal bill (the £8,000 cost to return his body to the UK and bury it was covered by an undertaker in Sheffield.)

Despite the sprawling cemetery I guessed where the newer copse of graves were and found it quite easily. I had a close-up photo of the headstone but no plot number. Another one from my childhood gone. I did a salute and left.

Louise Fox with the famous headline...