Paying Gest

‘DAVID Gest once claimed that if anyone so much as harmed a hair on his wife’s upper lip, mole or head, he’d swing for them.

‘Smile, David, or you’ll get what’s coming to you’

The wife in question, as if you need reminding, was Liza Minnelli, a title she will proudly hold until the couple’s divorce is finalised in days to come.

But the twist in this modern romance is not that somebody hurt Liza but that, as papers filed by Gest claim, she beat up him in drunken rages.

The Sun has seen the divorce papers, filed in New York, and notes for our benefit the allegations that attacks by 5ft 4in Liza left David in so much pain he needed 11 different painkillers to dull the agony.

He did, though, not need stitches – a relief to any of us who have seen and envied the man’s pure candle-like complexion.

But the hidden scars run deep, and now he wants out of the 16-month marriage.

Anyone familiar with Gest will have some sympathy for Liza, and read his claims with a nodding head and a soft sigh.

For instance, when we hear Gest say that after the couple’s honeymoon he woke to find his wife drinking a bottle of vodka, we understand what pain she must have been in.

The is no word for her condition, although we suggest Gestitis – ‘the painful recognition that you have married an odd little being with glasses’.

But David is suffering – from ‘insomnia, vertigo, scalp tenderness, nausea, hypertension, mood dysphoria, photosensitivity and phonophobia’.

And for that lot he wants £6m by way of a panacea.

His claim is currently being investigated by PD James, who has said she will pass on her findings to Cagney & Lacy in the local police department.’

Posted: 22nd, October 2003 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink