Фредди Старр: Жизнь и карьера британского комика и певца

British stand up comedian and singer (1943–2019)

Freddie Starr (born Frederick Leslie Fowell; 9 January 1943 – 9 May 2019) was an English stand up comedian, impressionist, singer and actor. Starr was the lead singer of Merseybeat rock and roll group the Midniters during the early 1960s, and came to prominence in the early 1970s after appearing on Opportunity Knocks and the Royal Variety Performance. In the 1990s, he starred in several television shows, including Freddie Starr (1993–1994), The Freddie Starr Show (1996–1998) and two episodes of An Audience with in 1996 and 1997. In 1999, he presented the game show Beat the Crusher.

Starr was born in Ulster Road, Liverpool, (from his autobiography) England. At the age of four, he moved with his family to Huyton. One of seven children, Starr was the son of a bricklayer, who was often unemployed. According to Starr, his mother Hilda (née Feihnen) In his 2001 autobiography Unwrapped, Starr gives speech problems as the reason he spent two years away from home as a child. He attended Sylvester's Primary, and later Huyton Secondary Modern. His father died when Starr was in his early teens. Starr was encouraged by his mother to perform from the age of 12 working in pubs and clubs. For five years, he was a member of the Hilda Fallon Roadshow which toured community halls and hospitals.

Under his birth name, he appeared as a teenager in the film Violent Playground (1958). In 1961, Starr joined Derry and the Seniors and spent most of his time playing in Germany. They became the first Liverpool beat group to record and later release the LP in 1962. After disbanding in late 1962, Starr became the lead singer of the Merseybeat pop group The Midniters (also spelt as Midnighters) which was managed by Brian Epstein. During this period Starr's group performed in Hamburg's nightclubs, around the same time as the Beatles. He appeared as the second act on the 1970 Royal Variety Performance during which he did comedy impersonations of Cliff Richard, Tom Jones, Adam Faith, Billy Fury, Norman Wisdom and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Two of his albums charted: After the Laughter in 1989 and The Wanderer in 1990. From 1972, he was one of the main performers in the television series Who Do You Do? and a regular on the TV panel show Jokers Wild. Stuart Jeffries in his Guardian obituary of Starr wrote that his act was "pre cerebral, unrepentantly sexist, often racist comedy that was rendered overwhelmingly obsolete by the late 1980s". For 20 years, from 1974, Starr developed an addiction to Valium. The chat show host Michael Parkinson wrote that it "addled his talent and confused his personality", eroding "a virtuosity equalled by only a very few entertainers". Starr gave his own account of the story in his 2001 autobiography Unwrapped, stating that the only time that he ever stayed at Vince McCaffrey's house was in 1979, and that the incident was a complete fabrication. Starr writes in the book: "I have never eaten or even nibbled a live hamster, gerbil, guinea pig, mouse, shrew, vole or any other small mammal". Starr's frustration at being linked perpetually to the hamster story was expressed in a newspaper interview, when he commented: "I'm fed up of people shouting out 'Did you eat that hamster, Freddie?' Now I say, give me £1 and I'll tell you. Then if they give me £1, I say 'No' and walk away." Starr says that the story came about after he made an offhand joke about eating a hamster in a sandwich. The Suns front page headline after Starr's death was "Freddie Starr Joins His Hamster".

Starr appeared in Freddie Starr (1993–94) and The Freddie Starr Show (1996–98) made by Central. At the beginning of his appearance on LWT's An Audience with Freddie Starr in 1996, he threw handfuls of live maggots at the audience. Nevertheless, Another Audience with Freddie Starr followed in 1997. He was not present on the day because of television commitments elsewhere, but gave an unusual post race interview live on television to presenter Des Lynam via a mobile phone, with the television viewers able only to hear Lynam's responses to what Starr was saying. In March 2009, Starr appeared in Living with the Dead, a reality television show about people being haunted by ghosts. Freddie claimed his 1930s house was being haunted by an evil entity which he called George. During the show it appeared that he was possessed by this entity. It was later revealed that the entity's name was Roger. During the episode, Freddie says that since he was a boy he was always spiritual and firmly believed in ghosts. Starr was due to tour in 2010, but the tour was cancelled when he suffered a major heart attack in April 2010, resulting in quadruple heart bypass surgery. The tour dates were rescheduled for 2011 after he recovered. His last tour was in 2015 which included a reviewed date at the Royal Hippodrome Theatre in Eastbourne with his last performance being at the Princes Theatre in Clacton On Sea.

Starr was a keen supporter of Everton F. C., and was a vegetarian from his teenage years onwards. In April 1994, Robin Coxhead, a gardener employed by Starr, was charged with alleged theft of £41,000 worth of jewellery from the comedian's home. When questioned by the police, Coxhead claimed the jewellery had been given to him as a reward because he had been giving oral sex to Starr over a period of five years. However, Coxhead was discredited in court when he was unable to state whether Starr's penis was circumcised or not. Starr had six children. One of his daughters, Tara Coleman Starr was born in the late 1990s and was a child actress, portraying Claire Thompson in the BBC soap opera Doctors. Following his death, Coleman Starr stated that he was violent, alleging that he punched her mother in the stomach whilst pregnant with her, demanded that her mother had an abortion, walked out on her as a child and contributed towards her needing therapy at 14. In October 2012, Starr obtained an injunction to prevent a claim from being made about his personal life. The injunction was overturned as it was considered to be an issue involving potential defamation, which the media outlets concerned were not planning to publish. On 8 October 2012, Channel 4 News reported allegations relating to Starr's appearance on Jimmy Savile's BBC television show Clunk Click in 1974, which he denied through his lawyer and in media interviews. On 1 November 2012, as part of Operation Yewtree, Starr was arrested by police at his Warwickshire home, in connection with the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal. He was arrested on three subsequent occasions, without any connections to Savile, the last being on 12 February 2014. Starr denied the claims made against him. On 6 May 2014, it was reported that the Crown Prosecution Service had decided not to bring charges against Starr in connection with the allegations, on the grounds of "insufficient evidence". On 10 July 2015, the High Court dismissed a claim for slander and libel that Starr had brought against the woman who had made the allegations relating to his appearance on Clunk Click in 1974. The woman's claim was found to be true, but the case could not proceed because of the passage of time. He emigrated to Spain, but denied this was due to the legal bill estimated at £1 million, saying he had planned to move to Spain whatever the outcome of the court case.

Starr was found dead at his home in Mijas, on the Costa del Sol, Spain, on 9 May 2019, aged 76. A post mortem showed that he died from coronary artery disease. The director of Malaga province's Institute of Legal Medicine stated that Starr's death "was the result of a natural process, and specifically an ischemic heart disease." At the time of his death, Starr was living in constrained financial circumstances, and his funeral costs were covered by an undertaker from Sheffield. The funeral was held at Prescot Parish Church on Merseyside on 13 June 2019, with his body being buried in a family owned grave in a cemetery at Huyton.

Title Year Role Violent Playground 1958 Tommy Who Do You Do? 1972 1973 Various Impressions The Squeeze 1977 Teddy Mr. H is Late (TV short) 1988 Short Undertaker Supply & Demand (TV pilot) 1997 Lance Izzard Ohh, Nooo! Mr. Bill Presents 1998 1999 Various Characters