Everyone’s favourite American Gest

Jun 23 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Emma Pinch gets the lowdown on David Gest, his celebrity lifestyle and friends, and tries to separate truth from tall tales

DAVID GEST is one of those people things seem to happen to. Take a couple of months ago, when he was visiting his good mate, Stuart Manning, from Hollyoaks.

They arranged to meet at a restaurant in the Albert Dock. Gest arrived at a thronging Gusto to find Champagne flowing, and it was packed to the rafters with local footballers and actresses.

His appearance boosted the showbiz count into the stratosphere. Flashbulbs popped and he smiled his sleepy smile, mobbed by fans.

Manager Tim Bacon delightedly told reporters that Gest’s visit had been “a total surprise”.

“Oh I was rocking and rolling,” drawls Gest, 55. “I came in and there’s people grabbing me and they finally brought in security.

“But,” he chuckles, “it wasn’t that restaurant I was supposed to go to. It was the restaurant two doors down. I’m going, ‘this doesn’t seem like where he would take me, to an opening’,” he murmurs.

Flashbulbs popped and Gest smiled his sleepy smile and won a legion of new fans.

Anyone who saw him in the jungle, on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, will know how fiendishly difficult it is to determine the point where the facts end and fiction starts. Over the phone, it’s even trickier. The only giveaway is the infinitesimal pause of childish glee when he knows he’s got away with something particularly outrageous.

Today, he was supposed to be making a personal appearance in Manchester, but the trip is cancelled at the 11th hour. An explanation prompts more questions than it solves.

He describes how he cut his foot open “to the bone” on a metal trash can. It was one o’clock in the morning.

“I was rushing to get ready to go somewhere and someone had moved the metal trash can. It was dark and I ran right into it. It was gushing with blood and they couldn’t even stitch it. Luckily, some people were there when it happened.”

Heavily bandaged, he spent last weekend DJ-ing and singing at a festival in Scotland, in front of 8,000 fans. His foot is healing but slowly, and has not helped his punishing dance rehearsals for David Gest . . . My Life!, billed as a musical concert extravaganza and due to hit Liverpool in October.

The self-aggrandising autobiographical show is much loved by Hollywood divas of a certain vintage, and by co-incidence his former wife, Liza, has also hopped up onto a stool this year to indulge in misty- eyed recollections about wonderful, sweet people she couldn’t have done it without.

There, I imagine, the similarity ends, unless she too enlists the talents of a troupe of “Chinese dancers with herpes” choreographed by Brian Thomas, the man who did Michael Jackson’s 20th anniversary extravaganza, and led by the wonderful Tess.

“Tess Tickle”, deadpans Gest, before continuing his slow, deliberate monologue about famous people he has worked with.

David Gest counts as friends and colleagues more Hollywood legends than you could shake a stick at – Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra and Whitney Houston, to name a few.

He’s suddenly serious: “There’s a thread right through from the beginning, which opens saying I’ve been through everything and I’m standing, and I’m here. It goes a little into my childhood, about how I was beaten by my father when I was young, and I show how you learn to get strong at a very young age.”

From age 11 onwards, music and solid friendships were his salvation.

“I didn’t care how, I had to listen to music,” he says. “At 19, I had a core of people around me that included two of the Jackson Five, Tito and Jackie – Michael was a little too young – and Smokey Robinson.

“I kind of tell the story about how Michael and I became best friends, dating his sister LaToya. How she got sick one night and he said, ‘would you take me to a memorabilia show?’. I said, ‘it’s a bunch of junk’ but started collecting thanks to him, and it was a wise investment.

“I also tune it into some of the people on the show who have been my friends, part of a core group,” he continues, slowly and deliberately.”

THE only aspect of his life he doesn’t delve into in the show is his stormy marriage to Liza Minnelli. Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson were matron of honour and best man at the wedding.

Then there was THAT kiss.