Frederick Leslie Fowell (born 9 January 1943 in Huyton, Liverpool) known professionally as Freddie Starr, is an English comedian, impressionist, singer and actor. Starr was the lead singer of Merseybeat pop 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. Starr was born in Liverpool, England. Under his birth name, he appeared as a teenager in the film Violent Playground in 1958. In the early 1960s, Starr was the lead singer of the Merseybeat pop group The Midnighters. The group was promoted by the manager of the Beatles, Brian Epstein, and was recorded on the Decca label by Joe Meek, the record producer of the single "Telstar". During this period Starr performed in nightclubs in Hamburg and was an acquaintance of the Beatles. Still relatively unknown to television audiences, Starr was "discovered" through the talent show, Opportunity Knocks where he appeared as part of comedy/beat act Freddie Starr and the Delmonts. He appeared on the 1970 Royal Variety Performance. From 1972, he was one of the main performers in the television series Who Do You Do and also a regular on the TV panel show Jokers Wild. He went on to star in his own series. Starr had a chart album titled After the Laughter and a UK Top 10 single, "It's You", in March 1974. Freddie Starr was the subject of one of the best known 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 alleged 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 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. 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. n 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 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 not. Coxhead was found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in prison in 1995. Starr is a keen supporter of Everton and at the height of his television celebrity he appeared on ITVs coverage of the buildup to the 1984 F A cup final, in which Everton defeated Elton John's Watford 2-0, when he appeared on the lawn outside the hotel where the Everton team were staying on the morning of the game and gave an impromptu comedy performance to the players who watched from the windows of their rooms. He appeared in Freddie Starr (1993-1994) and The Freddie Starr Show (1996–98) made by Central. His appearances on LWT's An Audience with Freddie Starr in 1996 and Another Audience with Freddie Starr in 1997 were critically acclaimed[citation needed], although Starr admits in his autobiography that his television appearances often failed to capture the chaotic atmosphere of his live performances. Apart from an occasional guest appearance, Starr has not appeared on British television since the late 1990s. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• published: 25 Jul 2014
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