George Michael’s ex Kenny Goss reveals pair had open relationship – and star even shared stories of his lovers
GEORGE MICHAEL’S longtime partner Kenny Goss has told how the couple had an open relationship — with the singer even sharing tales of his cruising conquest with a podgy stranger.
The superstar shocked fans when he was caught cavorting in bushes with the van driver at a gay pick-up spot on Hampstead Heath in 2006.
But the one person who was not the least bit surprised was Kenny.
He explained: “People often ask me about that incident but it was just our life. The only thing George was worried about was that the bloke hadn’t been better looking!”
The Texan continued: “It was an open relationship. That is quite usual with gay couples. It was on both sides.
Fight for humanity
Kenny spoke out to raise the profile of the pair’s charitable Goss-Michael Foundation. He has not been paid for this interview, but The Sun on Sunday has made a donation to the foundation (g-mf.org).
The foundation was set up by the pair in 2007 and supports causes including hunger relief and HIV prevention.
It plans to raise awareness of mental health issues and back those with addiction problems. UK charities and projects will also be supported.
Its annual MTV RE:DEFINE event has raised more than £9.25million for HIV and Aids prevention.
Money also goes towards Project Angel Food, which feeds the sick, and Advocacy Right which backs domestic violence victims and funds shelters.
For more information and to donate .
“But I don’t think I was as open as George.”
The art dealer has given The Sun a series of interviews to raise the profile of , a charity the couple set up in 2007.
And he also told how the death of George’s mum in 1997 triggered a newfound wildness in the singer’s lifestyle.
George, who died on Christmas Day last year aged 53, would often head off for night-time encounters with strangers on the Heath — then come home and tell Kenny about his exploits.
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They included his infamous encounter with a pot-bellied 58-year-old which hit the headlines 11 years ago.
George later described the man as resembling foul-mouthed comedian Bernard Manning.
At the time, Kenny and George — who were together for 15 years — were living a mile from the park in a £10million mansion in Highgate, North London.
Kenny admitted: “George was honest with me, sometimes too honest. I would be like, ‘Enough, I know enough’.
“He would say, ‘I am going out to Hampstead Heath’. It was an open relationship but sometimes I really didn’t understand the issues with danger.
“I worried about him as the relationship went on and we were together longer. You worry about the people that you love and I loved George.” The couple got together in 1996, the year before George’s beloved mum Lesley died of cancer aged 60.
After she passed away, the American immediately noticed a new recklessness to his grieving lover.
Kenny explained: “His mother kept him in check in a lot of ways. There were things he didn’t want his mother to see, certain things, lifestyle things.
“When she wasn’t there he did what he wanted, he didn’t care anymore. His drug use escalated after she passed away too.
“I don’t think she would have approved of some things.
“She was so proud of him — he always wanted to make her proud.”
Kenny now lives in a penthouse in LA, the city where the pair first met.
Kenny recalled: “I met him in 1996 at the Beverly Hot Springs. It is a very, very posh spa here where all the movie stars go to.
“You sit in this hot water. You steam, you get all the dead skin off.
“George spotted me and asked me out for dinner a couple of times.
“He said for the first couple of meals he didn’t know if I was gay or not so he didn’t mention anything gay. “Then on the third meal he definitely did!
“I fancied him, he was incredibly cute. He was very good looking and he liked me. Everybody wants someone to love them.
“Of course I knew who George Michael was, I would be lying if I didn’t, I just didn’t listen to music so he took me back to his house and showed me his videos.
“He showed me Faith and Father Figure. I think he quite liked the fact that I didn’t know everything about him. I wasn’t into music.
“George would laugh that I always had the same five CDs in my car and never changed them.”
The couple were soon splitting their time between homes in St Tropez, LA, Dallas, London and a 16th Century house in Goring-on-Thames, Oxon — where George’s favourite snap of his lover, in the garden, was taken in the Nineties. It was also the home where George later died.
Kenny said: “Back then I was the ultimate party boy.
“When were in St Tropez I would be out until three or 4am. But over the years I began to have a lot more pressure in my life and I suffered from alcohol issues.
“Addiction runs in my family. I was drinking to fall asleep, I was drinking in the mornings.
George would laugh that I always had the same five CDs in my car and never changed them
“I don’t like the person I become when I drink. I was mean, and I am a nice guy.
“I hate to hurt people. I really do. George tried to help. He encouraged me to go to rehab. He was so worried about me.”
Kenny went to rehab twice. George of course also had addiction problems and in 2011 after 15 years the separate addiction issues caused them to decide they would be better off living apart.
But they remained close and Kenny helped George cope with the singer’s own stint in rehab in 2014.
Kenny said: “I am not perfect, he is not perfect, addiction is an illness, there is no shame to it.
“It wasn’t me being the good guy, him being the bad guy.
“I have still got the text messages he sent me over the years, I have looked at a lot of them since he passed.
“I would thank him for what he did for me, I would tell him how much he was loved, how beautiful he was. I started sending those positive messages when he was in rehab, I I did that until the very end.
“He was always telling me how proud he was of my sobriety and I’d always remind him that I wasn’t perfect, that I had relapsed too.”
Kenny now runs the Goss-Michael Foundation which the pair set up together in 2007 to support hunger relief and the prevention of HIV. He wants to expand the charity to help people with addictions and mental health problems.
Kenny said: “I know George would want me to do this, I know he would be proud of me.”
'Legged it from Sharon Stone meal'
GEORGE often FLED from restaurants just moments into dinners with fellow celebrities, lover Kenny has revealed.
He could not bear other diners gawping so would scarper off home leaving his partner to entertain the bemused A-lister.
Kenny explained: “We would often have dinner appointments with very famous people and we would get there and after a few minutes George would leg it.
“Maybe after the starter, he would say, ‘Oh darling, do you mind if I leave I’m not feeling well’.
“So everyone would be sat there thinking, ‘I am stuck with the f***ing boyfriend for two hours’.
“One time it was Sharon Stone. We went to a beautiful French restaurant together in central London and after a few minutes George decided he was going.
“Sharon was a lovely lady. At the end of the dinner I thought she’d be like, ‘I am out of here’.
“But she said, ‘Where are you going now? Can I go with you?’ So I took her to my mate’s wife’s birthday party in a pub and she stayed all evening.
“Imagine walking in with Sharon Stone! It was fantastic.”
George's 'huge fear of loss and illness'
DEATH became a huge fear for George after the loss of his first serious boyfriend and his mother within four years of each other.
Brazilian fashion designer Anselmo Feleppa died from Aids aged 36 in 1993, six months into their relationship.
Then mum Lesley passed away from cancer in 1997 aged 60.
Kenny said: “I think the dual impact of losing Anselmo and Lesley had a huge impact on him.
“He had a huge fear of loss and illness. George spoke to me about Anselmo a lot, he was George’s first real boyfriend.
“He said he was a sweet, kind man and developed full-blown Aids fairly quickly.
“George was worried about it. Very soon after we met George and I got tested for Aids.”
Later the singer tried to avoid doctors and hospitals as they brought back such bad memories.
Kenny recalled: “He didn’t like to go to the doctor at all, he missed most of his doctors’ appointments.
“And if someone got sick or was in the hospital he couldn’t be around them because he was so worried about losing them.”
Messy Spice
FORMER Spice Girl Geri Horner spent a year living with George and Kenny – and was so untidy she earned a telling-off.
Ginger stayed with the couple in one of their US homes when she was trying to spend time out of the UK for tax reasons.
Kenny, who is godfather to Geri’s ten-year-old daughter Bluebell, recalled: “She was living with me the whole time. She couldn’t go home. She was so cute but sometimes I’d have to say, ‘I want you to hang that back up and put it back up on the clothes rack’.”
Geri, now 44, and George were close friends, and in January this year she named her newborn son Montague George Hector Horner in memory of the star.
Meanwhile Kenny revealed that after George’s death, he was so grief-stricken he hired a clairvoyant in the hope that he could speak to his former lover one last time.
He told The Sun: “The thing I miss the most is just picking up the phone to him and listening to him saying, ‘Hello darling, how’s the weather?’ He would always ask about the weather!
“A friend of George’s came to me and said she knew a clairvoyant who may be able to help me contact him. It was a couple of months ago.
“So I rang her up, I would have done anything to make contact. But I quickly realised she’d been researching me, she was telling me stuff that was already out there.
“I don’t know what I was looking for, just something, George telling me what to do now.
“She said, ‘I can’t tell you anything I don’t know’. She didn’t tell me a damned thing. I felt ridiculous.
“Since George died I have had a lot of people contacting me saying that they can speak to the dead and I must call them. I ignore it.”
Elton and George settled feud
ELTON JOHN and George Michael rekindled their friendship before the singer’s death, Kenny says.
The singers had been extremely close for years, and had even released a duet together before their friendship began to turn sour in the late Nineties.
In 2004 Elton claimed that George was in a “strange place” and said there was a “deep-rooted unhappiness” in his life.
Fuming George hit back a few weeks later in an interview, saying that the only thing Elton knew about his life was what he heard through the “gay grapevine”.
But Kenny told us: “I am really good friends with Elton and his husband David Furnish – I sat with them at the Oscars in February.
“We laughed about the stupid fights he and George would get into. I can’t remember what the last fight was about. Elton and George would have stupid little tiffs. But any feuds had ended before George died. They always knew they were going to get over it, they were like kids.”
Kenny says that George admired Elton’s music and added: “George’s music idols were Elton and Freddie Mercury. He liked Annie Lennox and Adele too.”
Meanwhile the Texan revealed that he is still mystified by what George saw in on-off lover Fadi Fawaz. Aussie Fadi, 40, was the one who found the singer dead in his bed on Christmas Day.
Kenny said: “I don’t know him, I don’t want to judge Fadi.
“I don’t understand why George chose him. George was a bright man, an academic. Fadi was the polar opposite of me. George and I liked to chat about politics – I think he thought Brexit was the stupidest thing ever!”
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