Their relationship is all the more poignant because Simon started off as just another devoted fan. Over the years however, he became a close friend of Dusty's, eventually moving in with her at her Henley mansion. He became her carer after doctors confirmed they were unable to beat the cancer first diagnosed four years earlier. Simon gave up his own career as a backing singer to spend every day with Dusty, coping with her needs and providing support as she fought her illness. He is able to relate at first hand how her indomitable spirit kept her going.

"She put up such a great fight, at one stage I began to wonder if the doctors had got it all wrong. Sadly, they hadn't--we kept being told not to get false hope," Simon recalls.

He had first become a Dusty Springfield fan at the age of 14, when he would shut himself away in his bedroom at his parents' Glasgow home and listen to all her recordings. Now 48, he says: "I loved the voice. There was something about her personality as well--the zaniness that was apparent at that time. I learned to sing myself by singing along to her songs."

When Dusty embarked on her first solo tour during the Sixties, Simon was to be found cheering from the front row of his local theatre. Afterwards, he chased her taxi to a nearby hotel where, in the lobby, she signed her autograph on his wrist. He didn't wash that spot for weeks.

By the time he was 20 Simon had decided to quit his job as a housing officer with Glasgow Council and try his luck as a singer in London. He married young, but it didn't work out and he found himself single again. By chance, his London flatmate hired out sound systems to performers, including singer Doris Troy. She was so impressed with Simon's voice that she encouraged him to become a backing singer. She soon had him singing behind her at Caesar's Palace in Luton, along with Madeleine Bell, one of Dusty's closest friends.

"I remember coming home from the show one night to Madeleine's place and Dusty was on the answering machine saying she was coming home to promote her latest album. She needed some backing singers and could Madeleine help. Madeleine looked at me; it was just one of those moments where I was in the right place at the right time."

"Dusty and I got on instantly and became really good friends," Simon says. From that moment on, every time she came over to Britain she called on Simon to work with her. So began a professional relationship and friendship that was to last 20 years.

Thinking she was clear of cancer after its initial treatment, Dusty was horrified to discover the disease had reappeared a second time. She was advised to put her personal affairs in order. Remembering that bleak day, Simon continues: "I don't think she knew quite what to do when she was told that she had a limited time to live. I prayed that she would say, 'I'm going round the world, going to see the Pyramids or going to see friends in the States.' Maybe it was because she still wanted to fight the illness, but she just stayed at home." Simon moved in with Dusty and ended up staying for 15 months until she finally passed away in March.

"Her way of coping was to fight it," he says. "She would have the latest information sent to her by the Cancer Institute in America and go to the doctors armed with it."

A constant flow of get-well messages arrived at the singer's house from her showbiz friends--Bette Midler, Angie Dickinson and Carole King all supported her--but few were encouraged to visit. "She was very private. In many ways a loner," Simon explains. "She wanted to remain private in dealing with her illness."

Paul and Linda McCartney tried to help Dusty, with Linda putting her in touch with her own American specialist who checked the kind of treatment Dusty was receiving from the Royal Marsden Hospital and supported everything that was being done. "Linda was a great support. She called all the time. Every week she would send flowers or plants or little trinkets. Dusty was devastated when she died. None of us had realised how ill Linda was. Dusty may have known, but if she had a secret she kept it a secret. After Linda's death, Paul continued to call and send her flowers and plants, which meant a lot to her."

Although he says she was "wonderful" to him, Simon admits Dusty, like many artistes, could be "stormy and temperamental". She would throw crockery at walls to relieve her frustrations and once threw the telephone at him. Simon admits he made allowances for her. "I wasn't in love with her. She was my hero. She became one of my best friends. When you start living with somebody, your relationship changes. I had to bite my tongue because it's not natural for me to be passive.

"She would have been very difficult to have a romantic relationship with because of her temperament. I think she knew she functioned better as a human being without the complications of a relationship. Nicholas, her cat, became the centre of her life. But she had a lot of loyalty from people who had been around her. Nobody betrayed her.

"For Dusty's last Christmas, there was just her and myself and I cooked Christmas dinner. We had the whole thing, with crackers, just for the two of us. She loved it."

Earlier this year, Dusty was too ill to attend the investiture of her OBE from the Queen at Buckingham Palace, so it was delivered to her at the Royal Marsden Hospital. Her brother, Tom Springfield, and a few of her best friends had gathered in a private room as she was handed the award.

Says Simon: "It arrived in a Fortnum and Mason carrier bag. We thought that someone would have brought it from the royal household knowing she was so ill. But Dusty was so thrilled about the award. She immediately thought she ought to go shopping because she hadn't anything to match the red ribbon on it.

"She never gave up the urge to shop. As ill as she was, she was always reading fashion magazines and wanted the latest things. One day, she had been in for chemotherapy and on the way home she persuaded the paramedics to stop the ambulance so that she could go into a shop and buy a beautiful stainless-steel draining board."

A few months before she died, Dusty told Simon how she was worried about what was going to happen to him. "You're going to be a cranky old man," she teased. "We were sitting with our arms around each other. She's always been there for me. Sometimes it felt like we were husband and wife."

Dusty liked to have her bed in the centre of one sitting-room at home rather than shut off in a bedroom. She was up every day except the last, when she was given morphine.

Simon says: "She looked incredible, right to the end. Although she lost weight she still had wonderful skin. Her hair had gone silver, but she had it coloured a month before she died. Dusty told me: 'I'm going out blonde.'" There was one sensitive moment that brought tears to his eyes. Dusty always knew that Simon had been booked to tour with James Last later this year and, during her illness, she referred to it. "One day she said, 'Let's see, you've got that James Last tour coming up. I'd better be gone by then.'" Sadly, she had no other choice.

Months later, Simon found himself singing at her funeral, a powerful rendition of "The Wind Beneath My Wings," as Dusty had requested in her will. It was typical of her way of facing up to things. "She was very brave," says Simon. "She never once asked 'Why me?' She fought her illness with all she had and won for a lot of the time. If she hadn't been like that she'd have been gone much earlier."

David Wigg
Daily Express (London),
14 June 1999

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