Personal Life
Chris de Burgh has been married to his wife Diane since 1977 and lives in Enniskerry, County Wicklow in Ireland. They have two sons, Hubie and Michael, and a daughter, Rosanna, a model, who won the Miss World competition in 2003 for Ireland. He is a distant relative of the 13th-century English nobleman Hubert de Burgh, who features prominently in Shakespeare's play The Life and Death of King John. He is an avid Liverpool F.C. supporter, as is Rosanna, and they often attend matches at Anfield.
In 1994, he was found to have had an affair with his children's 19-year-old Irish nanny, Maresa Morgan, who was assisting the family while de Burgh's wife Diane was recuperating in the hospital from a broken neck during a horse-riding accident. His daughter Rosanna indicated during an interview with The Irish Independent that she held little sympathy for Morgan, regarding the latter's portrayal of herself as a victim as "pathetic" and hoped "she pays for her mistake". She forgave her father for his affair.
De Burgh has pursued and won 16 defamation actions. The Irish Independent said he has always been a bit prickly about criticism. Peter Crawley, a theatre reviewer at The Irish Times, found this out the hard way when he wrote a less than sympathetic review of de Burgh's show in Dublin's Gaiety Theatre in September 2009. Crawley noted: "He departs the stage for 'Lady in Red', invading boxes and draping himself over audience members ... Certain toes will never uncurl after this experience, but it is almost admirable how unaltered de Burgh has remained by the flow of time." In a lengthy, much-publicised reply to the critic, de Burgh made his feelings known, particularly in the postscript:
"We were wondering by way of explanation and, as you seem to portray yourself as a bitter and unfulfilled man, were you much teased by your school chums in the schoolyard and called 'Creepy Crawley'?", de Burgh wrote.
Read more about this topic: Chris De Burgh
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“I feel the desire to be with you all the time. Oh, an occasional absence of a week or two is a good thing to give one the happiness of meeting again, but this living apart is in all ways bad. We have had our share of separate life during the four years of war. There is nothing in the small ambition of Congressional life, or in the gratified vanity which it sometimes affords, to compensate for separation from you. We must manage to live together hereafter. I can’t stand this, and will not.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)