I can remember watching Adam Faith and Zoe Wanamaker
in the television Love Hurts. I only knew
him as an actor but he was a successful singer for many years (I think my mum
quite liked him as he had been a teen idol in her days.) Here I am outside the Best
Western hotel in Stoke-On-Trent where he had a fatal heart attack aged 62 in
front of his 22-year-old lover. He was appearing in a play Love and Marriage at Stoke’s Regent
Theatre and returned on the Friday night after a performance.
His real name was Terence Nelhams-Wright and
he was discovered by a TV producer performing at a Soho coffee bar in central
London in 1950's. He went to be one of the biggest pin-ups of British pop world
in the 1960s and was the first UK artist to lodge his initial seven hits in the
Top 5. Pop music is part of culture now but there wasn’t any years ago. Adam
was one of the icons like Cliff Richard who was riding one of the first waves
in the pop music world. He gave up his singing career in 1967 and turned to
acting, probably as he’s been investing in property for years and was worth
many millions of pounds. In the 1970's he found renewed fame starring in the
popular TV series Budgie about a Cockney
lad just out of prison.
I was vaguely aware of his success as a singer but I knew him in the
1980's when he was a financial advisor and wrote columns for The Daily Mail.
Through the 1990's he split up with Jackie, his wife of 37 years. He’d had
numerous affairs - one with tennis player Chris Evert - and Jackie wouldn’t
tolerate it anymore. He was a wealthy man but lost the lot in a financial
landslide: in 1999 he set up satellite television channel called The Money Channel but it imploded within
two years. With debts of over £30 million Adam was declared bankrupt.
His heart declared itself bankrupt at this hotel on a retail estate
surrounded by the usual Benny & Jerry and McDonald stores (I’d just filled
the car at Morrison’s nearby.) He’d had a history of heart trouble and had a
heart bypass operation 16 years earlier but nobody expected such an early end. After
the show at the theatre he signed autographs for fans and enjoyed a late meal
with his young girlfriend. Staff later said he didn’t look well. One newspaper
reported he’d been having sex with his 22-year-old lover Tanya when his heart
failed. She was a millionaire’s daughter but he’d chatted her up four years
earlier when she was working as a waitress (she was ten years young than Adam’s
daughter - blimey, dude!) They were watching a film in bed when he had a heart
attack and his faced turned blue.
Tanya called an ambulance at 12:57am. The medics put Adam on a trolley
and rushed him out through the hotel lobby. A girl rushed across to Tanya to
reassure her, “‘Don’t worry, your dad will be all right.” The ambulance rushed
them to North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary and Tanya watched as they massaged
the failing heart. All efforts were in vain as Adam was in cardiac arrest and
had lost consciousness. He’d probably died by this time but was pronounced dead
at 2:30am. He had escaped death before, almost losing a leg and his life in a serious
car crash in 1973 having fallen asleep then crashed into a tree (an eight hour
operation was needed.) Tanya phoned his agent who instructed her to get out of
there and go back home to Kent - immediately; she needed to be obliterated from
the story before the Press shot it through with some colour.
She was not allowed to attend the funeral. Ever the womaniser Adam had
actually been back with this wife Jackie for many years and she was furious but
probably not surprised by the affair (she was in Spain when he died.) They shared
a rambling red-brick farmhouse in the picturesque village in Kent. A Humanist funeral
service was held at the crematorium at Tunbridge Wells, the star making his
final appearance in a £600 cream wicker casket decked with flowers. It took
Tanya two years to get over the shock of the death.
Round the back
of the hotel…
Etruria Hall
forms parts of the hotel (once for the home of Josiah Wedgwood who died here of
jaw cancer)…
Take in the
1960s…
Adam was
cremated at Kent and Sussex Crematorium…