Drink, drugs and male escorts – inside James Blunt’s wild life and why Carrie Fisher’s daughter blames him for her death
SELF-CONFESSED “one-hit wonder” James Blunt made a career out of being uncool – but in his new book, the singer says there is much more to him than that.
Packed with eye-popping revelations about celebrity girlfriends, showbiz pals and drug-fuelled misdemeanours, it shows the You’re Beautiful star is more rock ’n’ roll than many people think.
But cheeky James has a handy get-out clause should any of his revelations land him in trouble – the book’s title, Loosely Based On A Made-Up Story, suggests all may not be as it seems.
He adds: “Much of this happened back in the musically utopian, drug-addled haze of the greatest decade in the history of mankind – The Noughties – and so, as Big Liz would say, recollections may vary.”
His publishers insist it is not a work of fiction.
Here, we present some of his most outrageous tales so you can make up your own mind.
© James Blunt, 2023. Extracted from Loosely Based On A Made-Up Story: A Non-Memoir, by James Blunt. Out now, published by Constable priced £20 in hardback. Also available in ebook and audiobook.
Did he do drugs with Star Wars Carrie?
JAMES’S friendship with the late Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher is well documented – and the singer tells how she invited him to live with her in LA on the day he met her in 2003, having just signed his first record deal.
He went on to write most of his debut album, Back To Bedlam, while living in a cabin in the grounds of her mansion – using the piano that Carrie kept in her bathroom.
James was with her the night before she was found unresponsive during a flight in December 2016. She passed away four days later in hospital.
He writes: “I was closer to Carrie than almost anyone else in the world, except my wife. She told me which girlfriends weren’t suitable, was the first person I told when I met my wife, and we chose engagement rings for her together.
“She also knew where every unmarked grave of mine lay and where every guilt stemmed from. She was complicit too. When I arrived home one morning with a love bite on my neck, and my girlfriend of the moment about to arrive, Carrie grabbed her 16-year-old daughter and gave her a love bite as well.
“Then Carrie summoned me over, offering her own neck, and told me to give her a love bite. When the girlfriend arrived, we all had love bites.
“There was also an issue with drugs. Carrie had long been open about her addiction, but at some point it was obvious enough to be of concern.
“I stood many times at the foot of her bed at 3am listening to the laboured breathing of someone sounding close to death on heavy medication. Not long before she died, I asked her to be godmother to my son, telling her that I wanted her to take care of herself so that he might know her when he grew up.
“Charlie, her best friend, confronted her more directly and told her she needed to quit drugs, but was ostracised by her as a result. I took a different approach and did them with her, pretending to myself that I would guide her to redemption one day – just not today.
“The lies we tell ourselves are the hardest to forgive. As a result, her daughter Billie blames me in part for her death, and no longer speaks to me.
“They buried Carrie’s ashes in a giant ceramic Prozac pill.
“You can see a picture of it on the CD disc of my first album. There are only two of them in the world, and the other one is my most treasured possession.”
Sexy nights with movie star Lohan?
BEFORE marrying wife Sofia Wellesley in 2014, James dated some of the world’s most beautiful women.
His book details flings with singer Nicole Scherzinger, socialite Paris Hilton, model Elle Macpherson and actress Lindsay Lohan.
James’s relationship with Hollywood wild child Lindsay began in 2007 when they left an LA nightclub together.
He recalls: “As I drove us out of the parking lot with the paps chasing behind on foot, the girl I’d just met climbed out of the passenger seat, straddled me and shoved her tongue down my throat – and that’s how I met Lindsay Lohan.
“After a brief pit stop at Jamie Foxx’s hotel room, where he and a few friends were drinking, Lindsay and I headed back to hers. By now it was late, but she’d invited a few people over. They were all pretty messy. I was recording the next day, so at around 3am I told her I was heading home. Lindsay begged me not to leave. She told me that I should just climb into her bed and she promised me that she’d be there in half an hour.
“Taking me by the hand, she led me to the bedroom, put me in her bed, kissed me, and left – and I fell asleep with the sound of the party in the background.
“I don’t know how long it was – but at some point, the door opened and the lights came on. I looked up, expecting to see a hot, drunk girl about to climb into bed with me. Instead, the face of Lindsay’s huge African-American security guard greeted me.
“‘Hey, James, you’ve got to go now,’ he said. ‘What?’ I replied, confused.
“ ‘Lindsay says you’ve got to go,’ he explained. ‘What do you mean? Where is she?’ I asked. ‘She’s gone,’ he replied. Sure enough, the apartment was empty.
“Four days later, Lindsay called me to join her at a party in the Hollywood Hills. It was a Sunday night, and again I was in the studio the next day, so I told her that it wasn’t going to be a big night for me.
“She was relaxed – she said I should just get in her car and the driver would take me to hers.
“As before, I undressed, climbed into bed and fell asleep. At some point, hours later, the lights came on.
“ ‘Hey, James,’ said the deep, warm, familiar voice. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘Yeah, man,’ said her security guard. ‘Lindsay says you’ve got to go.’
“He patted me on the back on my way out.”
Did he lose tank while drunk in Kosovo War?
ARMY veteran turned pop star James says he volunteered for the 1998-99 Kosovo War campaign by accident – as he tried to dodge a gruelling training exercise in Wales.
Once in the country – which he ruefully describes as “much like Wales” – he served with distinction.
But he tells how he lost a tank during a drunken escapade while preparing for battle near the border in Macedonia.
James explains: “As we were setting up a single vehicle hide and sweating in the afternoon heat, a local farmer came over carrying a two-litre bottle of 7 Up.
“ ‘Slivovitz!’ he exclaimed, pointing at the bottle. At the time, it seemed like the polite thing to do to have a drink with the farmer, and it didn’t seem like a bad idea to have a second one soon after.
“But as dusk fell, it seemed more of a bad idea that he and I had finished off the bottle and I could no longer see, stand up or, most importantly, locate my vehicle or my soldiers.
“Slivovitz, it turns out, is very strong homebrew – around 56 per cent ABV.
“‘How did you lose a f***ing tank?’ I remember asking myself, impressed at my own ineptitude.
“My squadron leader, Major Clee, was on the radio asking for my location so that he could come and check on us.
“ Giving him the wrong coordinates was easy. Working out how to message my tank crew to ask them where they were was harder.
“My boss was on the same radio frequency, and the airwaves were currently full of him screaming abuse. He couldn’t find us at the location I’d given him.
“This went on for a few hours, but in the half-light at around 5.30am, long after Major Clee had given up and gone home, I found my tank – less than 20 yards away, on the other side of the bush that I was lying under.
“A few days later, perhaps because my tank was so unfindably well- hidden, I was chosen by the squadron leader to take my troop up to the mountainous border with Kosovo.”
Was his house behind Boris’s £800k loan?
BACK in 2005, when You’re Beautiful was dominating the charts, Boris Johnson – then an MP with a column in The Telegraph – wrote a piece about James so nasty the singer’s mum wrote to him to complain.
But it wouldn’t be the star’s last run-in with the former PM – and James claims that in 2022, while the luxury housing market was in freefall, Boris tried to buy his house.
He writes: “Things had gone pear-shaped for Boris. His premiership was imploding, and with it, house prices collapsing. I’d already bought a new house, which at the time was the same value as the home I was selling.
“Suddenly, my own home was worth much less.
“I had also taken out a socking great bridging loan to tide me over.
“Now, interest rates were spiking, and the loan was costing me £50,000 every six weeks. I know, I know – ultimate First World problems.
“I’m pretty certain that God doesn’t normally get involved in high-end loans for the well-off, but I did turn skywards one sleepless night and say, ‘Hey God. I’m a little bit f***ed. Please send me a buyer soon’.
“Well, amazingly, God heard my prayer, and the very next day a man turned up and put an offer in on my house. That man was Boris Johnson.
“My mother was incensed. She wrote me an email: “Don’t trust that man!” But I didn’t have a choice.
“Then, six weeks later, when December had slowed the housing market to a complete standstill, and on the day we were supposed to exchange contracts, Boris pulled out of the purchase.
“My mother sent me another message: ‘What an a***hole!’ Soon after that, Boris hit the news again for making his mate chairman of the BBC, after he’d helped Boris secure a loan.
“Ethics committees were screaming nepotism, and journalists were left wondering what on earth he’d needed a loan of £800,000 for.
Well, I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but the deposit on my house was £800,000.”
Would Ibiza antics shock rock stars?
WHEN James moved to Ibiza in 2006, Oasis star Noel Gallagher announced he was selling his holiday home on the island because he couldn’t stand knowing James was nearby making “terrible music”.
But James – who built a club in his garden called “‘Blunty’s Nightclub – Where Everybody’s Beautiful If You Drink Enough” – details exploits on the island that might even shock the Manchester rock star.
He writes: “When I split up with my supermodel girlfriend Petra Nemcova, my friends and I got her running machine out and racked up a line of blow along the entire length of the treadmill. I then knelt down at the end of the machine, nose ready, while someone else set the speed to 15kmph and hit ‘GO’.
“It was a time of great experimentation. My doctor at the time decided he wanted to try having cocaine blown up his a**e through a straw.
“He thought I should administer, as I have a good set of lungs. I also own a Household Cavalry trumpeter’s mouthpiece, which seemed like the perfect implement for insertion and delivery.
“Having inserted the mouthpiece, I knelt down behind him, lips pursed, and at that moment his girlfriend walked in.
“There aren’t many ways to explain what you’re doing in these circumstances. ‘Err, it is how it looks,’ I told her.”
Did he run an escort agency as royal guard?
JAMES set up an agency called Company Of Gentlemen while in the Queen’s ceremonial bodyguard in London to escort “rich American women” to parties, restaurants or the theatre.
He bought a dedicated mobile phone but could not afford a professionally made website.
James writes: “I came across Quintessentially, a global luxury concierge service whose website looked really professional.
“I copied the HTML code, swapped their logo for mine, changed some of their photos and added some text explaining what we did.
“The phone started ringing off the hook. I went on the first job myself but, after that, I had a roster of captains and subalterns that I’d send out from Hyde Park Barracks.
“We charged £300 a night, of which I kept a hundred.
“We had about six months of plain sailing but, one evening, I returned to my flat and found [my sister] Emily looking distressed.
“She’d had a call from Quintessentially’s lawyers, who planned to sue.
“It took half an hour to delete the Company of Gentlemen website and remove any trace of Quintessentially’s code.
“When you logged on to companyof gentlemen.com, you were re- directed to a new site called verysorrysir.com.
“The page simply read, ‘We at company of gentlemen.com are very sorrysir.com.’ The lawyers didn’t call back.”