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Bee Gee Maurice critically ill
By Tim Cooper, Evening Standard Last updated at 00:00am on 10.01.03
Pop legend: Maurice, above left, in 1981 with brothers Barry and Robin
Maurice Gibb of The Bee Gees is critically ill in a Miami hospital today after a suspected heart attack.
The 53-year-old musician collapsed at his Florida home. Hospital doctors operated on him immediately, discovering major stomach problems.
In a statement today, a spokesman said: "Maurice has undergone surgery for an intestinal blockage. He is in a critical condition in intensive care. We are awaiting a full medical prognosis later today but everyone is very, very worried."
Maurice, who was once married to Lulu and has had well-documented drink problems in the past, is being comforted in hospital by his current wife, Yvonne, and their two children, Adam and Samantha.
He has also been visited by his brother Barry and Michael Jackson, with whom Barry had been working.
Maurice's twin Robin, who has been promoting a solo album in Britain, is waiting anxiously for news at his 12thcentury home in Thame, Oxon, and preparing to fly to his brother's bedside.
A friend said: "Obviously Robin is absolutely distraught. He has put all his work on hold and waiting anxiously for further news."
Maurice, the bass guitarist and keyboard player of the Bee Gees, is known to fans as "the funny one" of the three brothers, and distinguished by his penchant for hats.
He has been working with Barry on a new Bee Gees album in Miami, where both brothers live.
The Bee Gees are one of popular music's most successful acts of all time, surviving family feuds, ridicule, changes in musical fashion and tragedy, when younger brother Andy Gibb died.
They enjoyed a seemingly endless string of hits in the Sixties and, after a decline in popularity, reinvented themselves as a disco act. They enjoyed a revival thanks to the film Saturday Night Fever in the Seventies - and again in the Nineties when they won a lifetime achievement Brit Award.
Maurice met his first wife, Lulu, in the BBC canteen when they were both appearing on Top of the Pops in the late Sixties.
Their first date was at a Pink Floyd concert and they swiftly became British pop's golden couple - young, attractive and famous - announcing their engagement live on Lulu's TV show.
They married in 1969 with 3,000 screaming fans outside the church. She was 20 years old and still a virgin.
They entertained lavishly at their Highgate home, where Ringo Starr was a neighbour and regular house guests included Rod Stewart, Robert Plant, Dudley Moore and Keith Moon.
Maurice indulged his love of luxury cars, at one stage buying a Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Aston Martin in the space of a week, and they holidayed in St Moritz and Ibiza.
Lulu later revealed that their celebrity lifestyle masked an unhappy marriage, and they split in 1973.
"For all the parties, presents, tearful partings and reunions, we didn't know how to get along with each other," she said. "A lot of the time we fought like cat and dog and then made up again."
The couple were reunited onstage last year when they sang a duet on An Audience With Lulu.
