Special Guest: Garry Trainer
Intro.
Garry Trainer is an amazing osteopath and a born story teller. I had such a great time recording this episode with him. It was a sunny day and we sat down to have a few sips and share some knowledge. Here’s a cool story he told me about being on the Faith tour with George Michael and what happened to a ‘certain pair of boots’.
The Faith Tour.
Well, I, I remember the last night, George Michael was a real perfectionist and he wanted to get six number ones off the Faith album. And I remember him having the conversation with his manager, at Earls Court before the tour even started. He says “And I want the sixth single to be on the last week of the tour. So whilst we’re on tour, we can celebrate six number ones off the album”.
Rob was going “Yeah, okay, of course, George”, thinking, you know, he’ll forget about that. So anyhow, we’re getting close – three weeks to go – until the tour finished and George turned to round to Rob [and said] “Mate, the chart doesn’t come out. We ‘need’ to add another date to the tour”.
No one to dress him.
He wanted to add a date so that the chart would come out while he was on tour like he predicted it was going to happen.
So that’s what happened!
And so there were 180 people, in the entourage and 179 of them said, ‘Yeah, George, we can stay on
another day, let’s do another show. Let’s make this dream come true’.
One guy couldn’t do it. His name was Alan Keyes. I do remember his name well. He had a job that meant he had to leave the Faith tour. And the next day, he started with the Pet Shop Boys. He had been dressing George on the tour. So, they had everybody there so that George could do his last show, but they had no one to dress him. And I was walking past and I heard the conversation while I was going by, and I said, “Oh look mate, I could do that”, he said “What?” I said “I’ve seen this show for the last five months, every night, I could dress George Michael with my eyes closed” and they said “Would you?”, “Of course I would!”, I said. I didn’t get any extra money for it.
But, at the end of the show, you know the ‘Faith’ boots’?
George gave me them!
I've got the faith boots!
I’ve got the faith boots. They’re upstairs in my, they’re inside I can show you them.
He gave me the boots. And he just said, you know, “This is to thank you, for doing this for me tonight”, and I’ve still got them upstairs.
I ‘have’ worn them, I wore them to a party once! But then someone said, “Mate they might be worth a bit of money. You should put them away!”
George was a true great.
The Faith tour was in 1988. And I worked with all, you know, all the stuff he did from there on, he just became a great friend. He was, really um, and then the day that he died, it was just surreal, surreal.
You listen to his voice now and you just see what a great he really was.
