I was…
The great and the good employ vast swathes of lowly folk to do their bidding; trim their pubic mounds, slobber over their envelopes, extract them from interviews when they’re too chiseled to string a sentence together and that. But what’s it really like working for trumped-up celebs and VIPs? We asked a handful of former employees to give us the skinny. Which they did…
I was… Michael Hutchence’s PR
Gerry Agar took on the task of improving the perverted former rock god’s public image, but soon came to regret it…
What did your job involve?
Well, he got such a hard time from the press over here, and I was employed to redirect their negative opinion of him. And that’s exactly what I did.
What did he pay you?
Well, that was the stumbling block; he didn’t. It was at the stage when both of them (Michael and Paula Yates) were completely out of it most of the time and very very paranoid, so they thought that anyone who sent them an invoice was stealing his money.
Were there any perks to the job?
There were no perks at all, no! It was extremely extremely difficult. It was a complete nightmare.
Why was that then?
They lived in such a different world and you were just viewed as an object, one of the staff who are at their beck and call whenever. They were in rock ‘n’ roll and four o’clock in the morning to them is very different to four o’clock in the morning to us. I would quite often get a phone call then from him trying to have a conversation.
What drugs was he on?
Oh god, they were on everything combined – heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, Rohypnol (they used that a lot), and four or five Prozac a day. They lived a really bizarre lifestyle in which they were trying to maintain to the public that they were misunderstood loving parents, when in fact they were pie-eyed on every conceivable drug, which eventually turned them insane. Totally insane.
Did Michael ever come onto you?
Yeah! He came onto everybody! Again, it was mainly due to drugs. Ecstasy, of course, makes you love everybody. He’d make people feel special, but if you caught him on the third day of a comedown, he sure didn’t make you feel special then.
Did you witness him getting up to any kinkery?
Yeah. Well not directly, but I saw lots of evidence. They were into all sorts of bizarre stuff. They had rubber suits, ‘intruder’ outfits, handcuffs, speculums, sex toys… there were even catalogues of rubber outfits left around the nursery.
Do you believe that his death was suicide or a kinky sex game gone wrong?
I’ve always thought it was suicide. He felt an enormous amount of guilt that Paula had become what she’d become – but Paula herself had placed a lot of that in his head. I knew all about the games and the guilt trips she put upon him and he’d take more drugs to prevent himself from feeling more and more guilty. He was anaesthetizing himself. It all got too much for him.
Why did you stop working for him?
I just put in my notice. Enough was enough. Of course, he didn’t accept that there was a problem at all – he convinced himself that he wasn’t doing any drugs at all and they just kept on living in their own fantasy land.
I WAS… OZZY’S ROADIE
David Tangye first met Black Sabbath’s Ozmonster in 1968 and soon became his right hand man, accompanying him as he lurched around the world in a cider-fuelled rock n’ roll frenzy…
“I was mates with another band and soon struck up a relationship with the boys from Sabbath – in fact on the night when I first met Ozzy he’d been on the cider and set fire to himself in the pub. I was unemployed back then so when they asked me whether I wanted to go out on tour with them I jumped at it. Pretty soon I was summonsed to the dressing room and Ozzy asked me if I wanted a job.
Basically, I looked after Ozzy’s stage stuff and his drinks, and in between tours I stayed at his place, Atrocity Cottage. It was like world war three every weekend; people would be OD’ing all over the place. It was carnage. He had guns – pump action shotguns and that – and birds wouldn’t dare fly over the place. Once, his chickens hadn’t laid anything for three consecutive days, and Ozzy had fired warning shots over their heads. I was indoors when I heard the shotgun going off. I stepped outside and there was Ozzy focusing his sights on the chicken run. The next thing I know there was blood and feathers all over the place. He shot four chickens and scared the rest of them shitless. The chap who lived next door was in his garden at the time and he famously said to Ozzy: “Unwinding are we, John?”
The best part of the job was when we played the States. However, the worst part was dealing with Ozzy when he got in his petulant moods. He was quite difficult sometimes and would get quite stressed out, but then he’d snap out of it and we’d go out and have a drink. And boy, did we drink. Graham (Wright, co-author of How Black was our Sabbath) tells this one story about how Ozzy took one groupie to his room in a hotel somewhere and before long, called for some of the crew to come in and see his latest party piece. He then asked this girl to spread her legs, which she did; he took a felt tip pen and drew two eyes and a nose right above her pubic hairs. Grabbing hold of her, he then performed a ventriloquist act, singing Al Johnson’s ‘Mammy’.
In the end I worked for Ozzy for about three years but he’s very very difficult to get hold of now and I don’t see him anymore really.”
I WAS… MOHAMED AL FAYED’S BODYGUARD
With a background in witness protection in Northern Ireland and black belts in karate and kickboxing, hard-as-nails human brick-stack Lee Sansum was ideally suited to watch the Egyptian shopkeeper’s very wealthy back…
What did your job with Fayed involve?
I did the whole range of close protection for four years, looking after him, his family and their guests. The majority of the work was counter surveillance – reccying venues, paying off bouncers and just looking at people looking at you. Historically, people who have been assassinated will have been watched by their attackers for a month perhaps. So, you’re always looking for the face in the crowd that doesn’t fit or the one that’s not behaving normally; then if you spot them you’re out of there.
Ever fought your way out of trouble instead?
Sometimes, but the key is to get out of the crowd without them knowing that you’re moving. You have to get out of there in a second to stay safe. It’s like a sixth sense almost – you look at the body language of the crowd and you can feel the mood changing, the situation growing; you have to make a split second decision and leave immediately.
In Ireland I’ve had to whack a few people to put them down because the option to flee wasn’t there – or the escape route was blocked. You hit them and knock them out with a preemptive strike. The secret, however, is to strike them on the jaw area with an open hand. If you punch them you’ll break your fist and you won’t be able to use your gun. Plus, the beauty of doing that is that if people see you do it, they’re not sure what you’ve done because you’ve got an open hand and there’s no anger in your face.
Who’s out to get Al Fayed?
A person such as Al Fayed gets his fair share of death threats. You’ve also got to take into consideration that he did bring down the British government [in the cash for questions affair], so there are people who are out to get him and embarrass him in public. You’ve also got nutters, or terrorists who are into causing as much controversy as they can. Or, if you’re in a nightclub, it could be your average Joe opportunists.
Were you armed?
No, security in the UK are not allowed to carry weapons. And it wasn’t our policy abroad.
Is he as, er, eccentric as he seems on the telly?
He’s just an average bloke from an average town who has become very successful and very rich. But that said, he’s a lad with a laddish sense of humour. Once in Saint Tropez he caught me out by getting onto the balcony above mine and pouring water over my head – he laughed all day about that.
Did you look after Princess Di?
Yeah she was great, I worked with her in Saint Tropez before she made that final trip to Paris.
Do you believe there was a conspiracy to kill her?
My standpoint is that there’s still a lot of information still out there. For example, the Government said they didn’t know where she was [at the time of her death] but we know full well that we were being surveiled by MI6 for months. She was very frightened and did tell me that she thought she was going to be killed.
Who else have you looked after?
Celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme – really down to earth guys. Mind you, the surprising thing was that they were very short guys – and I mean really tiny.
Could you take them on in a fight?
Well, put it this way, they’re probably pretty tough guys, but they know the value of security. There was one time I was with Stallone and it got pretty mad with fans – we were getting swamped – and he just went into ‘tell me what to do and get me out of here mode’.
Were you paid well?
Very very well, yes. I’m not going to go into details though.
Why are you no longer working for Al Fayed?
When Diana died I moved up to Scotland and went to look after his 165,000 acre Highland estate, where I met my now wife. We decided it would be better for me to go to Algeria to look after the guys on the oil pipelines – you can make a lot of money out there. I’m now training families to be their own bodyguards.
I WAS… THE QUEEN’S PERSONAL CHEF
Darren McGrady laboured in the sweltering kitchens of Buck House for years, knocking up quality tucker for our Liz …
How did you get the job?
I was working at the Savoy and I had a friend that had moved there, so I wrote off and applied. A few weeks later I was asked back for an interview and then I received a red-crested envelope saying that I’d got the job and telling me to report for duty.
What was the pay like?
Pretty poor. That said though, you do let lots of perks; you travel around the world with them and go to all the best places… If you’re single you get to live in, so they give you all your meals. The salary is a set wage – it’s the same as if you were working in a hotel – but with no overtime. Some weeks you could do 60 or 70 hours at Balmoral, others you could do 30 at Buckingham Palace because the Queen was away.
What was the Queen’s favourite food?
She does have a weakness for chocolate – she loves anything chocolatey. And then anything game. Anything they shoot on their estate – the pheasant and the partridge and the deer – they love all that.
Does she ever eat ready meals?
Nope, for the royals it’s all done fresh. Fresh vegetables from their
estate, good quality stuff. Bear in mind there are 20 chefs preparing their
food – and they need that many because they’re flying around all
over the place.
Does she have a personal taster?
No, no tasters at all, just the chefs. They do a huge security vetting process of all the staff though – when they checked me out they got a list of my parents, grandparents and family and checked all of them out. I think it’s even worse now.
Could you have poisoned her?
I guess I could have if I’d wanted to. Yeah, I was preparing her food, but as a chef I wanted to impress her not poison her!
Did they ever order in takeaways?
No, they don’t need to. They’ve got the best chefs there who can prepare all those things. If they want a curry, there’s the chef to do the job properly. They never have meals coming in in plastic boxes, no.
Did you have a budget?
What ever they wanted they could have. Obviously we weren’t flying out a plane to France to pick up some foie gras, but we’d have dispatch riders coming in from Harrods quite regularly.
Did she have any weird food quirks?
Nope, she was really easy to cook for. They ate at the set times, ordered their
meals three or four days in advance – and they’d never call you
at midnight for a curry making or whatever.
Did you ever give her the trots?
Not that I know of, but I’m not sure they would have told me if I had…
Would you cook for visiting dignitaries?
God yeah, we’d have state banquets. I’ve cooked for 40 or 50 kings and queens from around the world – that’s pretty good to have on your CV as you can imagine.
Did she ever say this food tastes like shit?
Ha! I certainly never saw any of my dishes come back…
Why are you no longer working for her maj?
Well, I went and worked for Princess Diana and stayed with her until her accident.
Now I’m in the USA, working for a multimillionaire in Dallas, Texas.
I WAS… JON BON JOVI’S RIGHT HAND MAN
Having spent thirty years on the road with various bands, Michael Francis is now ready to dish the dirt on his time with Bon Jovi. And no, they’re not as clean living as you might have thought…
I turned down the job first off; I’d never heard of the band, but when I told my sixteen year old daughter her mouth dropped and she said, “They’re going to be massive”. She was right. I took the job and in November 1986 was soon behind the scenes of their Slippery When Wet Tour. We came to Bradford and spotted two girls who stood out from the rest of the crowd, they were squeezed into tight, low cut black mini dresses and had secured backstage passes by giving blow jobs to several members of the road crew that afternoon. Later that night they were naked and inserting both ends of a cucumber into each other at the same time in front of us. Wherever we traveled, women threw themselves at Jon. I have never seen a rock star with such a powerful sex appeal. From the teenage girls pressed against the stage at the shows to the experienced groupies who check into the same hotels as the band, they all want the same thing: Jon Bon Jovi.
That tour was one long party, I slept for two or three hours a night and the buzz of the band’s success kept us going. Drugs were in steady supply – mostly cannabis, cocaine and speed – but I noticed that Jon himself never touched the coke. Part of my job was to make sure that local dealers did not make contact with the band – I can spot them immediately. Their body language gives them away – a predatory glint in the eye, or an occasional cocaine twitch. The safest way to score drugs was via overnight courier delivery. A New York travel agency maintained a lucrative sideline and the order is made in code – two tickets to New York, eight tickets to LA and so on. The drugs were delivered to a hotel, where the package was addressed to a fictitious name. It’s a clean and simple process.
Traveling was tough, but in the States we’d occasionally break a long interstate journey by stopping at the roadside to blast a few rounds an assortment of handguns stored on the bus. With a bunch of drunken rock stars spraying bullets around in the small hours, it was a wonder that no one ended up wounded or dead. Another night Jon and I got drunk on wine in a gangsters’ style restaurant in New York and he decided that we should go ice-skating, as you do when blind drunk at three in the morning. We ended up breaking into Wollman open air ice rink and getting surrounded by fifteen cops. When they asked what we were doing there, Jon shouted, “I’m Jon Bon Jovi and I’m the biggest rock star in America!” One of the cops laughed back: “And I’m fucking Martin Luther King.” They slapped handcuffs on us and we spent the night in the cells.
One of my most memorable experiences with Jon was when he turned to me one day and said he wanted to organize a party like the ones Led Zeppelin threw in the seventies, “This has got to be the most notorious week in rock history,” he said. And it probably was. Seven days in paradise with the best drugs, booze and women that Australia had to offer. We called it ‘The Lost Week’. We went out on a luxury yacht one day, on board: fifteen guys, twenty five girls, ice chests filled with food, beer, wine and champagne, plus a two ounce bag of cocaine and some of the finest weed in the southern hemisphere. All the girls were naked. As you can imagine, it was quite a party.
I ended up working with Jon for many years on and off, but I’ll always remember the time when each of the band members were presented with a silver pendant shaped like the Superman logo but with a double ‘S’ taken from the tyre track design of the Slippery When Wet cover. Each pendant was inset with fifty diamonds representing the states of America. As the families and friends applauded, Jon turned round to me with a sixth pendant in his palm, and placed it around my neck. I was, he said, “officially a member of Bon Jovi’s ‘Jersey Syndicate’”.
(feature co-written with mal alexander)
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