Death
After a failed court case against the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation over a copyright case which cost him £250,000 in 1989, Green lived out his life away from the media in solitude, confined to his Baker Street flat and lacking many of the financial riches of his former fame. After a lifetime of smoking a pipe, heavy drinking and latterly taking recreational barbiturates, Green was diagnosed with and died from lung cancer in the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Green's son Christopher postponed his wedding and flew from Canada to be at his dying father's bedside.
The bulk of Hughie Green's estate was bequeathed to his lover at the time of his death, Christina Sharples, widow of Green's friend and Opportunity Knocks musical director Bob Sharples.
His epitaph at Golders Green Crematorium, reads: "You were the star that made opportunity knock. You will never be forgotten. Christina".
Read more about this topic: Hughie Green
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“You listen to artists fighting with each other, competing to the death like gladiators, in order to see who is going to get into a show, who is going to make it, who isn’t: who is going to get a full-page ad and who is going to get a half-page. Then I think, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go off somewhere and just do your work?””
—Howardena Pindell (b. 1943)
“Nor has his death the world deceiv’d
Less than his wondrous life surpriz’d;
For if he like a madman liv’d
At least he like a wise one dy’d.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“And yet the sun pardons our voices still,
And berries in the hedge
Through all the nights of rain have come to the full,
And death seems like long hills, a range
We ride each day towards, and never reach.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)