Freddie Starr drove himself to hospital while having a heart attack because he couldn't trust his wife's driving
Freddie Starr once drove himself to the hospital while having a heart attack just because he didn’t trust his own wife enough to drive him there. The English comedian died of a heart attack at his home in Spain earlier this month at the age of 76 but had been dogged by ill health in the past.
Freddie’s fourth wife Sophie Lea (who remained married to him up to his death, but separated in 2015) recalled a time when he suffered an earlier heart attack back in 2010. The comedian refused to let her help him. The comedian even needed quadruple heart bypass surgery following the 2010 heart attack, but still wouldn’t let anyone help him get to the hospital.
"He just calmly came up to me and said, 'I think I'm having a heart attack. I need to go to the hospital.' In typical Freddie style, he said, 'I'll drive because you're panicking and might crash'," Sophie revealed to the Mirror. "So he drove to the hospital in our Audi A8 while having a heart attack. It was surreal but scary. He was more worried about me crashing than he was about having the heart attack," she said.
Sophie further revealed that after the comedian's heart attack, she moved into his home permanently to help care for him. "Gradually because we were spending so much time together, we ended up falling in love. I wasn't worried about the age gap. Mentally we were the same age as he was a lot younger at heart," she said.
The comedian's last wife added, "With Freddie, every moment turned into some sort of joke. He never really took anything seriously. He was a big kid at heart." However, the couple's apparently pleasant married life turned sour, but it wasn't because Freddie was investigated as part of Operation Yewtree in 2012.
Sophie further said in the interview that she tried to kill herself after her relationship with Freddie turned abusive, and even though they only married in 2013, she left the relationship in 2015. As we previously reported, Freddie was found dead at his Spanish residence on May 9. His body was discovered on the floor of his Costa Del Sol apartment reportedly by his carer following which the police and an ambulance arrived.
A neighbor was quoted as saying, "Police arrived first and then later an ambulance arrived and he was taken away. His next door neighbor who is a nurse said he was definitely dead. She said she thinks he may have suffered a heart attack." Another neighbor was also quoted as saying, "He’s been quite ill ever since he moved in and has barely left his apartment since moving in a couple of years ago. He would just sit indoors all day long and he never had any visitors. It’s so tragic."
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