Freddie Starr’s Final Homecoming

Freddie Starr was repatriated to Britain for his burial after a funeral director who had never known him personally agreed to cover the expense, sparing the late entertainer the possibility of a state-funded funeral in Spain.

The comedian died on 9 May 2019 at the age of 76. Although he had once ranked among the highest-paid performers on British television, reports at the time said he had little money left and was living alone in a small one-bedroom apartment on the Costa del Sol. He was also said to have been facing serious financial hardship.

Starr’s body was found by his Bulgarian caregiver, Nelly Georgieva. She later explained that she had not spoken with his relatives for several years, which created uncertainty over who would handle the funeral. Despite having six children, three ex-wives and a surviving widow, Starr reportedly left debts behind and had made no arrangements for his death.

The situation changed when Sheffield undertaker Michael Fogg volunteered to pay for Starr’s return to the UK and organise the funeral himself, even though the two men had never met. Fogg remarked that any comic capable of making a funeral director laugh had to be exceptionally funny, adding that Starr had certainly managed that.

Starr first became widely known after his appearance on the 1970 Royal Variety Performance. He went on to become one of the prominent television comedians of the 1970s and 1980s, part of the same entertainment generation as Frank Carson, Benny Hill, Bernard Manning, Jim Davidson, Tommy Cooper and Les Dawson.

Years later, he briefly reappeared on television in the 2011 series of I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, presented by Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. His stay lasted only three days, as he was forced to leave following a serious allergic reaction after taking part in a Bushtucker Trial. The previous year, he had undergone quadruple bypass surgery after suffering a heart attack. Over the course of his life, Starr married five times and became the father of six children.