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him, would you?”’ Pitt’s influence and David’s more
consistent efforts to ensure Joey remained in touch
with his grandmother helped keep Peggy out of the
press, but his aunt Pat was not so easily controlled,
contacting the Sun and the Star that July to tell them
that David was ‘callous and uncaring … and needs
to face up to his responsibilities’.
Pat’s anger was prompted by the increasingly
sad condition of Terry. David’s half-brother’s outlook
had improved after his marriage to Olga in 1972, but
had again deteriorated in recent years. Pat would
later accuse David of ignoring Terry and his wife,
although her account is challenged by David’s
friends, including Mark Pritchett, who remembers
seeing the couple at Haddon Hall. Pat’s anger
derived from the belief that she had taken on the
lion’s share of caring for Terry; her relationship with
her own husband, Tony, suffered under the strain of
Terry’s illness, which had reportedly resulted in fist
fights between Terry and his uncle. Although often
accused of ignoring Terry’s fate, David had wrestled
with the issue of his brother, opening up to
confidants and even writers such as Timothy White,
whom he told, ‘I’ve never been able to get through to
[Terry] about how he really feels. I guess nobody
has.’ David did go to see his half-brother during his
stay in London; his visit was followed by an unhelpful
headline in the Sun, blaring: ‘I’m terrified of going
mad, says Bowie.’
Pat’s attacks on Bowie, over this period and
thereafter, ensured his reputation as a manipulative
‘ice man’, who used and then discarded family and