Freddie Starr’s body may face a pauper’s burial after his carer admitted she could not afford to bury him in Spain and his family have not yet requested he be repatriated back to Britain.
Nelly Georgieva, 47, says the late comic, who died at his Costa Del Sol apartment on Thursday, is still in a hospital mortuary in Malaga and revealed none of his family have been in touch to talk through funeral arrangements nor request his body.
The live-in carer and close friend of Starr said she has now been left to settle thousands of Euros worth in unpaid medical bills.
Carer and friend of Freddie Starr Nelly Georgieva, 47, says she has now been left to settle thousands of Euros worth in unpaid medical bills
The live-in carer said that the late comic, who died at his Costa Del Sol apartment on Thursday, is still in a hospital mortuary in Malaga
Freddie Starr died at his Costa Del Sol apartment on Thursday and a post-mortem revealed he had died of heart disease
A tearful Ms Georgieva said: ‘I only have my savings, I don’t have the money to bury him here. Although I believe this is what Freddie would have wanted because he always felt a little hurt that the British public had turned against him in the later years.
‘I would prefer him to stay in Spain because it would mean I’d get to visit his grave more and pay my respects.’
Ms Georgieva told the Mirror: ‘It would be terrible if Freddie ends up being buried in a pauper’s grave.
‘I don’t want to see that happen but I’m worried if I tried to do something about it his relatives would object.’
Under Spanish law if a body is not claimed, town hall officials take over and perform a pauper’s burial.
Ms Georgieva said: ‘The problem is that I have little money at the moment. I’ve a thick wad of unpaid medical receipts and hospital bills in the apartment I need to pay off somehow and it totals several thousands of Euros.
‘I haven’t heard from any of his family back in Britain so I’ve no idea if they want to expatriate him back home.
‘Nobody has called since he died. I don’t even know if they have contacted the British Consulate in Malaga.’
Ms Georgieva would accompany 76-year-old Starr to the Express California and Oasis bars every day for coffee.
Locals said that he would pop in as many as three time a day but added they had not seen him there for at least a year because of his ill health.
Ms Georgieva said Starr had been suffering from poor health after being hospitalised just before Christmas and said that his 60-a-day cigarette habit had not helped.
Ms Georgieva would accompany Starr to the Express California and Oasis bars in Spain
Starr was found dead at his Costa Del Sol home on Thursday this week and documents have revealed that he was in huge debt
The carer said she would prefer Starr’s body remain in Spain because it would mean she would be able to visit his grave
Ms Georgieva said Starr’s finances had been drained in recent years and that he owed thousands of pounds in unpaid water bills and community fees at the complex where he lived.
Speaking yesterday from the two-bedroom apartment she shared with Starr she said: ‘He didn’t have a lot of money in the end, he was very careful with his finances.
‘Last year I found out that he hadn’t been paying the electricity for three years and had racked up a bill of between 1500 and 2000Euros. In the end I had to pay it from my own money.
‘I also found out that he owed thousands in unpaid water bills and service charges. A Man stopped me recently and shouted that Freddie hadn’t paid for this, hadn’t paid for that. Apart from a pension, I don’t think he had any more cash.’
Recalling their last hours together, she said: ‘It was a normal day, I made both of us a cup of tea and then I made him an omelette and a fresh tomato sandwich .
‘He was sitting down on the sofa watching Fox News on TV, the cat was on his lap.
Freddie Starr’s house in Mijas, near Fuengirola, southern Spain. The 76-year-old was discovered dead on the floor of the townhouse
Starr spent his final days talking to his pet cat Charlie (pictured) and listening to Roy Orbison records before he was found dead on the floor of his Costa Del Sol home, his Bulgarian carer said
‘He smoked quite heavily, I told him ‘you have to quit otherwise it’ll kill you’ but he never paid any attention.
‘I left about quarter to two to go to the supermarket and the chemists. When I came back about an hour later, he was slumped on the floor by the sofa.
‘I went over to check on him and knew straight away that he’d gone. I think it was a heart attack.
‘The police and ambulance arrived moments later and took his body away. ‘I’m devastated because to me he was such a kind man who made me laugh every day.’
Mother of one Ms Georgieva said that his health had deteriorated particularly over the last six months and he struggled to walk far because of his asthma.
She continued: ‘He hadn’t been in the best of health, he’d had a quadruple bypass and had serious problems with his asthma.
‘Twice in the last four years I had to call an ambulance for him when he was in a bad way and struggling to breathe. The last time was just before Christmas. I was really worried about him and said ‘what am I going to do if you die? Who do I call?
‘But he just laughed and said ‘I’m not going to die’.
Starr, right, and left, photographed at home with his second wife, Sandy, in 1974 who he married at the height of his fame. The couple had three children together
‘He never spoke about his family much, I knew that he’d been married several times and had many children but nobody ever came to visit him.
‘To be honest I’m not even sure if some of them even knew where he was. ‘Whenever I asked him about them he’d change the subject.’
The carer’s comments come after Starr’s friend Jim Davidson revealed the comic had ‘threatened to kill himself by eating concrete’ following his arrests on child sex allegations.
The revelation from Mr Davidson came as it was found that the Liverpool-born star ‘faced being made homeless’ over a huge debt to the woman he lost a libel case against over sex abuse claims.
Chain smoking Starr, who had five failed marriages, was said to have become a ‘recluse’ in recent months following years of ill health, and was rarely seen by neighbours in his residential complex (pictured)
Police sources said there was nothing to suggest the death was suspicious. Right: Starr pictured at a restaurant in Marbella, Spain in 2015 where he lived for several years before his death, and left, on the Des O’Connor Tonight show in the 80s
Public Spanish documents show lawyers acting for Karin Ward secured an interim charging order in January 2017 on the Costa townhouse where he died for £380,000 plus almost £115,000 in interest.
Mr Davidson, 65, revealed that the legal case had left Starr ‘broken’ and that his career had ended in a ‘sad way’.
Speaking to The Sun, he said: ‘He told them he was going to kill himself and that he was going to eat concrete.
‘I asked him what they did when he said that and he said, ‘They kept me in a cell for 14 hours while I had a psychiatric assessment’.’
Starr was found dead in his Costa del Dol home on Thursday and documents revealed that a freezing order had been approved by a court in the resort of Fuengirola.
Friend Jim Davidson revealed that the comic had ‘threatened to kill himself by eating concrete’ following his arrests on child sex allegations
This gave Ms Ward the chance to recoup some of the costs from the defamation case Starr lost at at the High Court in July 2015 after he sought damages for alleged slander and libel over her claims he groped her as a 15-year-old.
And she moved a step closer to getting Starr’s one-bed home forcibly sold at auction a year later with a local land registry office certification.
The fallen comic fled to Spain after his libel case loss without paying any of the money he owed, but invested part of the proceeds from the sale of a £700,000 home into property in Spain.
A well-placed source said: ‘Starr was definitely at risk of losing his Spanish home and being turfed out on the streets.
‘No date had been set for an auction but the ball was definitely rolling. The sale of the house would not have settled the entire debt Starr owed Ms Ward but it would have eaten into a chunk of it.
‘It’s pretty shocking to think a man who was such a household name in his early career could have ended up on the streets.’
Starr, who bought his home in the hills above Mijas Costa after leaving a nearby property he moved to following his flight from the UK, spent the last three years of his life as a virtual reclusive in the pokey 500 square foot townhouse.
Mr Davidson further highlighted Starr’s fall from grace and spoke about how Starr had been mortified after seeing a recording of himself singing karaoke.
He added: ‘I’ve been out there a few times and people have told me, ‘We see your mate Freddie Starr singing cabaret in the karaoke bars’.
‘It was a sad way to end a career for someone who I thought was Britain’s greatest entertainer.’
Mr Davidson had also been arrested following during Operation Yewtree and added that Starr had never been a ladies’ man.
‘It was a surprise to us all with Yewtree. Freddie never was a ladies’ man.
‘I think he was lonely in Spain. He was bothered by the stigma attached to it all.
‘On the surface, his way of dealing with that was humour and being awkward and being out of the box.
‘But deep down inside it was killing him — it was eating him up.
‘I survived Yewtree, but he didn’t. I think it really broke him. He was overwhelmed by it all.’
The former I’m A Celebrity star sold up and left the UK after losing a £1 million libel case against Karin Ward, then 57.
She claimed he had put his hand up her skirt when she was a teenager, before callously dismissing her as a ‘a###less wonder.’
He sued her for libel after she gave interviews saying she was ‘horribly, horribly humiliated’ by the fallen comic.
A High Court judge ruled Miss Ward was telling the truth and dismissed the case in July 2015.