Freddie Starr
Freddie Starr (born Frederick Leslie Fowell in Huyton, Liverpool 36 on 9 January 1943) is a zany British comedian who shot to fame after his appearance in the 1970 Royal Variety Performance. He is also a veteran impressionist and singer, with one chart album (After The Laughter) to his credit.
Freddie Starr is perhaps best known for his role in one of the most famous British tabloid newspaper headlines of all time. 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 small 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.
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 fifteen months in prison in 1995.
Additional information
- In 1994 he was the owner of Minnehoma, the winning horse in the Grand National race. [1]
- One of his most recent television appearances was as one of the celebrities in the second series of hit ITV1 reality show, Celebrity Fit Club, were he was made team captain, but was demoted three weeks later for not taking the role seriously.
- He once lived in Royal Windsor and worked in the famous Blazers Cabaret Club.
- He is a supporter of the football club Everton F.C.