Freddie Starr

Freddie Starr
Birth name	Frederick Leslie Fowell
Born	9 January 1943 Huyton, Liverpool, England
Spouse	Donna Starr (1996-present)
Website	http://www.freddiestarr.moonfruit.com

Freddie Starr (born Frederick Leslie Fowell in Huyton, Liverpool on 9 January 1943) is an English comedian who shot to fame after his appearance in the 1970 Royal Variety Performance. He is also a veteran impressionist and singer, with a chart album (After The Laughter) and UK top 10 single (It's You in March 1974) to his credit.

In the early 1960s, Starr was the lead singer of the Merseybeat pop group The Midniters. The group was promoted by the manager of the Beatles, Brian Epstein, and was recorded on the Decca label by Joe Meek, the producer of the single Telstar. During this period Starr performed in nightclubs in Hamburg and was an acquaintance of the Beatles. In a 1998 Record Collector interview, Ritchie Blackmore, the future Deep Purple and Rainbow guitarist, mentions that Starr's band had supported The Beatles in Liverpool in 1962 and had "blown them off stage."

Freddie Starr "ate my hamster"

The famous headline as it appeared in The Sun.

Freddie Starr is perhaps best known for his role in one of the most famous British tabloid newspaper headlines. On 13 March 1986 The Sun carried as its main headline: FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER. According to the text of the story, Starr had been staying at the home of Vince McCaffrey and his 23-year old girlfriend Lea La Salle in Birchwood, Cheshire when the incident took place. Starr was claimed to have returned home from a performance at a Manchester nightclub in the early hours of the morning and demanded that Lea La Salle 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.

Freddie Starr gives his side of the story in his 2001 autobiography Unwrapped. He says 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." The man behind the hamster story was the British publicist Max Clifford. When asked in a television interview with Esther Rantzen some years later whether Starr really had eaten a hamster, his reply was "Of course not." Clifford was unapologetic, insisting that the story had given a huge boost to Starr's career. In May 2006 the BBC nominated "FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER" as one of the top British newspaper headlines of all time. Starr's frustration at being linked perpetually to the hamster story was expressed in a newspaper interview:

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.

Later career

File:Freddiestarrunwrapped.jpg

Freddie Starr discusses the hamster story and other aspects of his career in his 2001 autobiography Unwrapped.

In 1994 Freddie Starr was again the subject of tabloid newspaper attention in Britain. Thousands of pounds worth of jewellery went missing from Starr's home where a man named Robin Coxhead worked as a gardener, and Coxhead was suspected of stealing it. When questioned by the police Coxhead, who was homosexual, claimed to have given oral sex to Starr over a period of five years, and that the jewellery had been given to him as a reward. The case went to court and Coxhead was discredited when he was unable to state whether Starr's penis was circumcised or uncircumcised. Coxhead was found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in prison in 1995.

Starr had his own TV show in the early eighties The Freddie Starr Comedy Express, the show was a big success.Apart from the occasional guest appearance, Starr has not been seen regularly on British television since the late 1990s. In 1993 he had his own ITV show entitled simply Freddie Starr.  ITV's The Freddie Starr Show, broadcast between 1996 and 1998, was his last major work for the medium.   His appearances on LWT's An Audience with Freddie Starr in 1996 and Another Audience with Freddie Starr in 1997 were critically acclaimed, although Starr admits in his autobiography that his television appearances often failed to capture the chaotic atmosphere of his live performances.

Freddie Starr is still touring in theatres across the United Kingdom.

Additional information

• In 1994 he was the owner of Minnehoma, the winning horse in the Grand National race.

• In 2004 he appeared on television as one of the celebrities in the second series of the ITV1 reality show, Celebrity Fit Club, where he was made team captain, but was demoted three weeks later for not taking the role seriously.

• Freddie Starr gave an interview to the Herald Express, the local newspaper for Torbay in Devon which was published on July 20 2007. In it he says that his father was violent and broke both his legs, a claim which does not appear in his 2001 autobiography Unwrapped. He says that he was taken away from home for two years at the age of six after his father beat him up. In Unwrapped Starr gives difficulty in speaking as the reason why he spent two years away from home as a child.
• In January 2008, Starr and his wife Donna took part in Celebrity Wife Swap, exchanging with Samantha Fox and her partner Myra.

See also

Rock Star Ate My Hamster

Further reading

Unwrapped - My Autobiography by Freddie Starr with Alan Wightman ISBN 1-85227-961-3

External links

• Freddie Starr's official website
• Freddie Starr's entry in IMDb