Robin Gibb: A somewhat sleazy Bee Gee

Decadent: Robin and Dwina Gibb
13 April 2012

With his goofy grin, lavender-framed glasses and that exuberantly fake toupee, there is something undeniably odd about Robin Gibb. Like many showbusiness legends - and Gibb has been famous for 40 years now - he seems to have grown a little more individual with every passing year.

A teetotaller and ardent vegan, he is also a one-time shoplifter, arsonist and amphetamine addict. He enjoys an open marriage to a bisexual female druid and poetess.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more unlikely new best friend for Tony Blair and his family than this particular Gibb brother - a highly strung loner who is an acknowledged eccentric even by showbusiness standards.

"Robin is a lovely guy," says one music industry publicist who has known the Bee Gee for more than 20 years. "But he's not what you'd call the bloke next door."

Superficially, of course, Robin Gibb is the perfect holiday host to the Blairs, as he is absolutely filthy rich - with a personal fortune of around £140 million - and generous enough to offer the PM and his family the use of his £5.2 million home over the holiday season.

Whoever is footing the bill, there is no doubt that the Blairs will enjoy their stay at his tenbedroom mansion, which is in the flashiest part of Miami, overlooking Biscayne Bay.

The walls of every room are lined with gold and platinum discs - a thrill for our guitar-toting PM - and everywhere you turn there are fine antiques and flourishes of expensive good taste. Although the walls were once painted exotic deep shades of teal and plum, now the house is mostly a simple, but dazzling, white.

With the Bee Gees, comprising his older brother Barry and twin Maurice, who died in 2003, Robin notched up more than 50 international hit singles.

And though the Gibb family joke has long been that Robin's singing voice sounds like a "quavering Arab", Tony is said to be particularly impressed by his musical achievements.

Cherie, meanwhile, has found a firm friend in Gibb's colourful second wife, Dwina. It must be said, though, that Dwina's tastes make Cherie's last exotic pal, Carole Caplin - she of the dance troupe and alternative therapies - seem like a humble housewife.

Dwina, a self-proclaimed "druid queen", wore white robes for her coronation ceremony on Primrose Hill, London, in 1992. She has erected a stone circle in the back garden of the Miami mansion so she can celebrate the solstices at home, is a member of the Dracula Society, and is fond of reading tarot cards.

In her more respectable moments, Dwina, the daughter of an Irish engineer, writes poems and plays, and collects spinning wheels and pictures of unicorns and dragons.

She is also involved in the exceedingly right-on charity Rights And Humanity, which aims to give those living in poverty their "human rights". Mrs Blair rejoices in the role of Women's Rights and Empowerment Network Patron for this organisation, and the pair are said to be on warm personal terms as a result.

They were introduced by Sir Cliff Richard, who has always had a soft spot for Robin. Surely, though, the Blairs were lulled into a false sense of security by the Cliff connection.

Do they even begin to suspect just how alternative their holiday hosts are? For the home in which they are staying was, according to Dwina, partly designed by her lesbian girlfriends.

"Heterosexual women are more territorial," she sighed in an interview recently, adding that her lesbian friends had freely shared their advice about how to decorate the Miami pad.

She added: "I hate labels like lesbian or bisexual, but I do enjoy the company of women. I've had very good friends for years, not just physically but spiritually as well. And Robin, it seems, likes to have his wife's girlfriends around. I share chores like cooking and shopping with them. You need a big house for an open relationship."

The couple spend around 60 per cent of the year under the same roof, and are open with each other about having other sexual partners.

"From the beginning we negotiated an open relationship," said Robin. "We have achieved a wonderful combination of freedom and closeness. I don't worry about Dwina finding someone else and I don't have the urge to settle down with someone else, either. Jealousy is energy-draining. Many marriages fail because of it."

That is not to say that the Gibbs play any part in the seamier side of Miami nightlife, where drugs and promiscuity are rife. Instead, the rule seems to be that they live very unconventional lives as discreetly as they possibly can.

Dwina was certainly furious when Robin talked about their sexual proclivities on a radio chat show 13 years ago, and received a blue Jaguar car by way of an apology - it wasn't that she was embarrassed, she later explained, it was just that she was worried about the impact it might have on her mother and their son, Robin John, who is now 20.

So who is Robin Gibb, and what shaped his life? Born on the Isle of Man into utter poverty in December 1949, he has been defined by a suffocating and at times destructive family dynamic, which propelled him into fame, but always kept the approval he longed for just out of reach.

As a result, he says to this day he is still in flight from the reality of life, and suffers from chronic low self-esteem.

"An artist is an artist because he is not happy with the world, so he creates his own existence," he once said.

His showbusiness career began at a prodigiously young age. While schoolboys in Manchester, Barry, the oldest Gibb brother, and his younger twins Maurice and Robin perfected the art of singing in close harmony.

They first performed, aged nine and six, in the toilets of John Lewis, because that was where the best acoustics in town could be found.

That shared bond as performers helped them escape from their handto-mouth existence; the family moved house every few weeks at one stage in order to stay ahead of the bailiffs.

Robin explained: "The real world was just too real and we didn't want to be a part of normal life. We wanted to create a magic world for the three of us. The three of us were like one person, and we were doing what we needed to do: make music. It became an obsession."

The brothers also developed a taste for truanting and getting into trouble.

"Barry and Robin were pilfering right, left and centre from Woolies and getting away with it," recalled Maurice in an interview before his death.

"One day, I was walking home and all the billboards in the main street in Chorlton were blazing away, firemen and policemen running around everywhere. That was Robin, the family arsonist. Another time he set the back of a shop on fire."

The family were advised about assisted passage to Australia by the neighbourhood policeman, who seems to have hinted that it was that or legal action. The three boys performed in their pyjamas every night on the deck of the ship which took them away.

In Australia, their father, Hugh, promoted the boys at radio talent shows. A domineering man, he never praised their performances, but instead would remark: "Good audience," if the show went well. It was enough to make Robin, always shy, cripplingly insecure.

And their upbringing was far from normal. They had no friends of their own age, and were always travelling and performing. Barry left school at 15, Robin and Maurice at 13.

In the mid-Sixties, they had a hit record in Australia, and began to get involved with drugs. Barry recalls buying liquid methedrine, now an illegal amphetamine, in chemists to help them get through their hectic schedule of performances.

Once back in the UK in 1967, success came quickly; legendary music impresario Robert Stigwood took them on and they had their first hit in Britain with New York Mining Disaster. Robin was only 17, and fell in love with the first woman he met: Molly Hullis, Beatles manager Brian Epstein's secretary. They were married within a year, and quickly had two children, Spencer and Melissa.

But the pressure of fame was too much for vulnerable Robin, and his drug use became uncontrollable.

"We used to go to America for a tour and I would stay up all night, collapse and then wake up in hospital suffering from exhaustion. I didn't know what I was doing."

His parents had him made a ward of court because they were so concerned. He even quit the band - the first of many attempts to walk away from his brothers.

Robin, who never entered rehab like his brother Maurice, but saw his baby brother Andy, who wasn't in the band, die from a heart attack aged only 30 after cocaine addiction, knows he was lucky to get through the years that followed.

"Looking back, I realise I might not have come out of it alive. I never took serious drugs like LSD or cocaine - I was scared stiff of them. And I never stayed up all night for reasons of fun, it was always for work."

His marriage fell apart as the band became more famous, with Robin jetting around the world while Molly stayed at home with the children in Epsom, Surrey.

A gulf opened up between the brothers, too. Maurice was a drinker, but Barry and Robin continued to share a taste for amphetamines. Each had their own manager, the arguments were frequent and Robin walked out several times.

After the band's incredible success with the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever in 1977, when the Bee Gees were at the height of their fame as tight-trousered, bouffant-haired, nutmeg-tanned sex symbols, Molly told him their marriage was over.

"I loved my wife, but I was still very young and still attracted to other people," he admits. "I have a high sex drive and I was unfaithful. I've had quite a few physical encounters - probably more than 100. Some of them were disappointing. They were mostly a distraction, almost like notches on a belt. I didn't have sex for love, just for fun."

The separation was acrimonious, and Robin did not see the children for four years, although he is on better terms with them now. He recalls being unable to eat while the divorce dragged on. "I felt I was going to die from complete misery," he said.

Robin even ended up in prison in 1983 after the divorce judge found that he had breached an agreement by talking publicly about the marriage. Sentenced to two weeks in jail, he appealed and spent only a couple of hours inside.

At a low ebb in 1980, he was introduced to Dwina. Sharing a birthday and an interest in history, Robin says it was love at first sight, and once contended that he might have known her in a former life.

The birth of their son Robin John a year after his divorce from Molly was not publicly revealed until the lad was nearly one.

Early in the marriage, his younger brother Andy sought sanctuary with Robin and Dwina at their Oxfordshire home. He was just 30, and running away from a failed marriage, failing career and the chaotic after-effects of cocaine addiction. He died suddenly at Robin's home.

Andy's death hit Robin hard, but a harder blow was to fall with the death of his twin Maurice, always the peacemaker and the extrovert in the group.

Maurice died suddenly in January 2003 after his intestine burst. Robin was so grief-stricken that for months he couldn't come to terms with his brother's death.

"I can't accept that he's dead," he said later that year. "I just imagine he's alive somewhere else. Pretend is the right word."

Robin, who has always been softcentred, has released a single in aid of tsunami relief and has even maintained a friendship with Alistair Griffith, his protégé; from the BBC Fame Academy series in 2003.

Those who worked with him on the show recall him as unassuming and easy to work with - but too much of an old hippy to pronounce harsh judgments of the contestants' talents. In one of the first shows he declared that all of the singers had "international potential". Most have, of course, faded into obscurity.

Since Maurice's death, Robin has released several solo records, and in the New Year is due to tour Switzerland. He and Barry, who lives next door but one in Miami, are currently considering gigging together in 2007.

Tony Blair is said to have packed his guitar for the Miami holiday and is even hoping for a New Year's Eve jamming session with Robin and Barry.

As the PM faces such a difficult year ahead, perhaps, instead of performing some of the Bee Gees' big hits for their families tomorrow night, he will choose one of their less well-known songs, Sinking Ships?

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