Maurice James Christopher Cole (25 December 1944 – 4 April 1995), known professionally as Kenny Everett, was a British comedian, radio DJ and television entertainer. Everett is best known for his career as a radio DJ and for The Kenny Everett Video Show.

Biography

Early life and education
Everett was born in Seaforth, Liverpool, Lancashire into a Catholic family as Maurice James Christopher Cole. Everett attended the local secondary modern school, St Bede's Secondary Modern School in Crosby, now part of Sacred Heart Catholic College. He attended a junior seminary at Stillington, North Yorkshire near York with an Italian missionary order, the Verona Fathers, where he was a choirboy. After he left school, he worked in a bakery and in the Advertising Department of The Journal of Commerce and Shipping Telegraph.

While working at a pirate radio station Radio London he was advised to change his name to avoid legal problems. He adopted the name "Everett" from American film comic actor Edward Everett Horton, a childhood hero.

Everett married the singer and psychic Audrey Lee "Lady Lee" Middleton (b. 14 February 1937, the daughter of a fireman) at Kensington Register Office on 2 June 1969. By September 1979, they had separated, and in the mid-1980s, he publicly acknowledged his homosexuality. One of his first boyfriends, a waiter called Jay Pitt, was found for Everett by his wife.


Political involvement
During the 1983 general election campaign, the Young Conservatives invited Everett to their conference in an attempt to attract the youth vote. Egged on by film director Michael Winner, Everett bounded onto the stage, wearing the enormously oversized foam rubber hands familiar from his mock-evangelical character Brother Lee Love. He shouted slogans like "Let's bomb Russia!" and "Let's kick Michael Foot's stick away!" to loud applause (Michael Foot was the leader of the Labour Party at the time). Everett later said he regretted the incident and that he had taken the foam hands to the rally because the Tories "asked me first". In an interview on Ireland's The Late Late Show with Gay Byrne and Sinéad O'Connor in 1989, Everett was challenged by O'Connor about his support for the Tory Party in the light of his homosexuality and the Conservative's Section 28 addition to the Local Government Act. Everett clarified that he was not a "full Tory", but that he had been appalled by the actions of Arthur Scargill, whom he saw as "inciting violence" and "rebel rousing" [sic] and whom he thought looked like "Hitler reborn". He had consequently supported the actions of Margaret Thatcher in opposing Scargill. He said he would stand up for gay rights if he were asked providing "it was a jolly occasion", but he also felt that being in a minority and in the public eye, he could do more for gay rights by showing that he was funny and human rather than by marching in the streets.


Friendship with Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury and Everett became close friends over the years they knew each other. First meeting in 1974, Everett had invited Freddie on to his breakfast show on Capital FM; the pair hit it off instantly. During the 1970s, their friendship became closer, with Everett becoming advisor and mentor to Mercury – and Mercury as Everett's confidante, helping Everett to accept his sexuality. Throughout the early-mid 80s, the pair continued to explore their homosexuality – in addition to drugs – and while the pair were never lovers, they did experience London night life on a regular basis together. During this time Everett and Mercury became involved with Nicolai Grishanovitch and a Spanish waiter named Pepe Flores.

In 1984, Everett found out Nicolai had contracted HIV; this added extra strain on his friendship with Mercury. By 1985, the pair had also fallen out over a disagreement on their using and sharing of drugs. During 1988, Audrey Lee "Lady Lee" Middleton completed her autobiography, with the foreword from Everett. Unusually, shortly after its publication and newspaper serialisation, Everett denounced the book for outing him. The fallout resulted in the pair only speaking via lawyer, with their friends – including Mercury – choosing to support Lee. Everett and Mercury started talking again in 1989, in their failing health. Their closeness was not on the same level as years previous, but they were able to reconcile their differences.


Illness and death
Everett was diagnosed as HIV positive in 1989, and he made his condition known to the public in 1993. He died from an AIDS-related illness, in the Kensington and Chelsea, London, on 4 April 1995, aged 50. A traditional requiem mass was held at Church of the Immaculate Conception in Mayfair, and Everett was later cremated at Mortlake Crematorium.