Nora Forster died aged 80 in April after a ten-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. There’s a bit of a story behind this, because Nora was German and the heiress to a fortune. She got tangled-up with a scallywag called John Lydon (AKA Johnny Rotten). They were married for 44 years, which is something in the show biz world. Lydon was there for her during her deteriorating condition and up until her death.
I did briefly meet Nora in a club in London in the early 1980s. She was a bit like my auntie Maureen (family members will know that I’m talking ‘eccentric’ here).
Last year John Lydon wrote a song for Nora called Hawaii. It was an echo of a favourite holiday they once had and was one of the few things that Nora could still remember, Lydon, who holds an Irish passport, entered the song into this year’s Irish candidates for the Eurovision Song Contest, hoping to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease. He didn’t get far with that, A) because Hawaii is not a Eurovision type song, and B) because of all the Ukraine war bollocks; but never mind the bollocks.
Hawaii always makes me cry. The following is not the official version (you can find that here). It’s worth paying attention to the video…
THE SLITS man next door
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AEa3pHaQJA
Nora’s father, Franz Karl Maier, worked as a “prosecutor who helped bring wartime Nazis to justice.”
Ari-Up was her daughter
Freddy, thanks for the info. I didn’t know that about Ari-Up.
With the amount of weight that Lydon has put on recently I think he won’t be far behind Nora. Lydon also said in a recent interview that he is going blind; maybe a diabetes thing?