The Queen Mum of Pop eyes fatherhood…
For better or worse, delusion is the de facto setting for any pop star truly worth their salt. So perhaps eyebrows shouldn’t be so archly raised that Elton John, in tandem with civil partner David Furnish, is eager to join the ever-growing celebrity adoption club. As he tells it, Elton became smitten with Lev, a 14-month-old HIV-infected tot, during a visit to the Ukraine to perform at an orphanage in Makeeva.
“David always wanted to adopt a child and I always said no because I am 62 and I think because of the travelling I do and the life I have, maybe it wouldn’t be fair for the child,” said the notoriously shy and retiring poster pensioner for Specsavers. “But having seen Lev today, I would love to adopt him… he has stolen my heart.”
However, as is his wont, John also couldn’t help but muddy the waters by revealing an ulterior motive – the death of his keyboard player Guy Babylon, 52, who suffered a fatal heart attack last week. “What better opportunity to replace someone I lost than to replace him with someone I can give a future to?”
DON’T GO BREAKING MY HEART
Noble if somewhat skewed sentiments and was Elton merely speaking from his heart (directly into a TV camera), when he speculated: “I don’t know what the procedure is to adopt a boy from the Ukraine”? Past form would suggest not, and the kibosh – for now at least – has been delivered by Ukrainian family minister Yuriy Pavlenko.
“Elton John will not be able to adopt, and if he files that request we will unfortunately deny it,” said Pavlenko. “The law is the same for everybody: for a president, for a minister, for Elton John. Foreign citizens who are single have no right to adopt children… and the age difference between the adopter and the child cannot be more than 45 years.”
I’M STILL STANDING
Age could be one of John’s saviours here. Does he really want to join the growing army of aging dads cluttering up the pavements before pram-raiding the Post Office; would he even still have any energy left when Lev turns 16 and he reaches a none too sprightly 77 (if his prodigious past addictions haven’t already foreshortened his life expectancy further). More pointedly, could John even cope with a bigger baby than himself?
When John agreed to let Furnish film him for 12 months for the 1996 fly-on-the-wall documentary Tantrums And Tiaras it had a dual purpose – to propel Furnish’s fledgling film career, and present a frank and insightful account of the life of one of pop’s most notoriously flamboyant superstars – though, of course, with the pair being lovers it wasn’t that frank and insightful, and John will doubtless have vetoed some of its more ugly truths.
All the same, for a notorious control freak, the footage of John playing tennis at a hotel in Antibes was less than flattering. “Yoo-hoo,” shouted a fan, and in an instant John was storming off the court and demanding a private jet to whisk him home. “I’m on fucking holiday,” he screeched. “I’m never coming to the south of France again.” Get her!
Yet this is minor fare to the damning indictment delivered by his therapist, Beechy Colclough, in the same show. “He’s a totally obsessive, compulsive person. He hates himself. He’s happy when he’s playing but he doesn’t believe the audience reaction. If it hadn’t been the alcohol, it would have been the drugs. If it hadn’t been the drugs, it would have been the food. If it hadn’t been the food it would have been the relationships. If it hadn’t been relationships it would have been shopping…”
And John’s not above a hefty bout of self-delusion either. There was the 2006 incident in Taiwan when he flounced around the airport in a powder blue shellsuit, unleashing a torrent of invective at the inevitable paparazzi, the most coherent words being “rude vile pigs”. And more cripplingly, his 1984 marriage to Renate Blauel, a German-born recording engineer. Doomed from the start, John later admitted he’d got spliced amid a drug-induced stupor. “Even though I knew I was gay, I thought this woman was attractive and that being married would cure me of everything wrong in my life… When you take that amount [of drugs and alcohol] you can’t have any relationship.”
THE BITCH IS BACK
To his credit, John has been clean since the early ’90s, and worked tirelessly to establish The Elton John AIDS Foundation – donating hefty sums from his own back pocket to kick-start it – and ultimately earning a knighthood for his philanthropy. Yet he’s still engagingly fond of a public spat, and no other star in the firmament seems to get his goat as much as that other notorious celebrity adopter Madonna.
John first lashed out at the material girl after discovering her nomination for Best Live Act at the Q Awards in 1994. “Anyone who lip-synchs in public on stage when you pay £75 to see them should be shot,” he crowed from the stage. “Madonna, best fucking live act? Fuck off. Since when has lip-synching been live? That’s me off her fucking Christmas card list but do I give a toss? No.”
And while John later apologised for his remarks, it was with a telling caveat: “The reaction to it was so hysterical. It was like I said, ‘I think all gays should be killed or I think Hitler was right’. I just said someone was lip-synching. I’m not afraid to speak my mind. I’m not going to mellow with age. I get more enraged about things as I get older because you see that these injustices go on.”
The war soon subsided but was reignited early last year when muscle-bound Madge staged a scene-stealing Oscar party directly against John’s own fundraising event at LA’s Pacific Design Centre. And while John’s drew a crowd that included Lionel Richie, Simon Cowell, Larry King and Sean Penn; Madonna’s trumped it by attracting A-listers like Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Penelope Cruz. According to a source for celebrity blogger Perez Hilton: “Elton despises Madonna and this has made things way worse.”
It may seem a little fantastical – and much of John’s adult life has been just that – but is the chubby-cheeked chappy christened Reg Dwight using little Lev as a pint-sized Trojan horse to bash Madonna’s recent adoption of Malawi orphan Mercy? Or has he just scored another monumental own goal?
