London - The Swiss culture of discretion is famous, and nowhere is it more in play than in the grand old hotels in Zurich. Here the wealthy come to take tea and rest their weary heads on the softest of pillows.
The grandest hotel of them all, the Dolder Grand, is where Mick Jagger was pictured canoodling with a ballet dancer on a balcony overlooking the lake, a bare 11 weeks after the death of his partner L’Wren Scott.
And its smart counterpart, the Baur au Lac, is where some of Fifa’s officials were arrested earlier this month — the hotel is near to its HQ and many shady deals are said to have been done in its magnificent interior.
It is no surprise, then, that this milieu for the well-heeled in search of reassuring obscurity is where you can reportedly find pop star George Michael this week. After reports that he is “in rehab” for an addiction to cannabis — 25 marijuana spliffs a day — the star with a £100 million fortune and an unfortunate history of narcotics is now rumoured to be a guest at one such grand hotel.
He has been spotted having dinner with friends at the Aura restaurant nearby. He drank white wine and smoked cigarettes on the terrace. He showed up four hours late — apparently to avoid being pictured — at an art exhibition in the grounds of the Baur au Lac hotel earlier this week, too.
Why the cloak and dagger? Well, George has barely been seen in public since the launch of his successful Symphonica album in the spring of 2014. Nobody has seen him at his home in Highgate, North London, nor at his Oxfordshire manor house on the Thames at Goring.
Restaurants such as the Villa Bianca in Highgate, where he was once a regular, shrug that they “never” see him. Even his local newsagent hasn’t seen him in two years.
He was a no-show at his close pal Geri Halliwell”s wedding last month. This absence has led to speculation about a renewed dependence on drugs — though he claimed a year ago to have finally kicked a 30-year dope-smoking habit — after previously being jailed for drug-driving.
In recent months George, who blithely admitted trying crack cocaine only four years ago, was said to be “in a bad way”, surrounded by a hedonistic crowd.
Some friends said they had given up attempting to contact him. “He has locked himself away, and everyone despairs,” one said this spring.
Only his long-standing associate David Austin, who has known him since pre-Wham! days, and his PA Michelle May have been seen letting themselves into his London home.
Those who feared the worst worried further about a deeply alarming incident last May, when an ambulance was called to the house at 8am. After four hours of treatment for an apparent “collapse”, he was admitted to hospital for further monitoring or care.
Now his PR of many years, Connie Filippello, says he is in good health and on an “extended break” in Europe.
How does he look? Well, he has changed a great deal from his chiselled looks a year ago. He is pale and some suggest that he has put on up to 3st.
More significantly, though, sources in Zurich say he has been through a long-term rehab programme. They say he is now taking a break, but is expected to return to complete it in a clinic soon.
He is said to have already had three months of treatment at the Kusnacht Practice, near Zurich.
It costs an astonishing £200,000 a month and is reputedly the most exclusive establishment of its kind in the world.
Reports that George was being treated first surfaced in a Swiss newspaper at the weekend. The article said: “In the clinic, he undergoes . . . an intensive treatment. The facility specialises in the treatment of addicts, helps prominent people to get away from drugs and alcohol.”
It added that he had been there for “several months”. As well as alcohol and drug addictions, the clinic treats “eating disorders, gambling compulsivity, depression, trauma and internet compulsivity”.
Officials at the clinic have refused to confirm or deny George’s stay. However, a source in Zurich said: “He came to Switzerland because he wanted to kick a drug habit.
“He picked the one place in the world that takes individualism to new heights — they have no more than three people under care at any one time.
“But he has gone to ground since the news of his latest therapy broke. The word is he wants to let the media storm die down before he goes back in for more treatment.”
Some hotels are reported to have an “arrangement” with the clinic to house clients — who are never called patients — and to ferry them in Mercedes limousines to the centre’s grounds for their therapy sessions.
The Zurich source went on: “It is the norm at most addiction clinics to treat people like prisoners, to isolate them from the temptations that have dragged them off the straight and narrow.
“But the Kusnacht doesn’t do this. Its philosophy is that the outside world has to be faced when the touchy-feely part is over and the client is despatched to the real world. George had a chauffeur at his disposal to take him wherever he wanted to go, to do whatever he wanted to do. The ethos of the clinic is: “You want to f*** yourself up, go ahead. It is your life.” ’
A rather confusingly worded statement was released by Ms Filippello. It denies he is in rehab but doesn’t address if he might just have finished a spell of rehab.
It runs: “We do not comment on private and confidential matters, such as anything related to previous medical treatment George may or may not have received — and we also expect you to respect his rights of privacy in such matters.
“However, we can say that contrary to some of the reports in the Press, George has not just entered rehab but is spending time in Europe. He is well and enjoying an extended break, as the recent photographs in a national newspaper clearly illustrate.”
A young hotel waiter, whose colleague recently served tea to George, said: “He was apparently polite but in an other-worldly way. But I was told he was most charming to all around him.”
George Michael’s boyfriend of four years, Fadi Fawaz, has likewise fallen off the radar. Fawaz worked as a hairdresser in a London salon when they started dating in 2011. He stopped that job in 2013 and an associate of the star believes they are no longer an item.
In a tweet in April 2014, George thanked fans for their support and described himself as “the luckiest man on earth”. The problem is that, tortured by grief, recurring depression and beset by shyness, he has never been able to really believe that to be true.
In an interview in 2006 he said he had suffered from: “Twelve years of depression and fear, and lots of other s***. I swear to God it was like I had a curse on me. There was so much death around me, I can’t tell you.”
Wham! was sold on the confidence and attractiveness of George and his schoolfriend Andrew Ridgeley, but in reality he was confused and inexperienced, and didn’t realise he was gay until he was 24. He says he never escaped the shadow of having been plump and unattractive as a youngster.
His great tragedy, though, was a romance with Brazilian Anselmo Feleppa, who discovered not long after they got together in 1991 that he had Aids. Feleppa died four years later. George became depressed, and his mother Lesley’s death in 1997 devastated him afresh.
He said he “came close” to wanting to die himself. “I couldn’t write and felt really worthless,” he told GQ. Instead he started to rely on Prozac and cannabis, smoking up to 25 joints a day.
There was a major back operation, which left him in pain, and then came the disgrace of his arrest after being caught masturbating in a public lavatory in 1998.
In 2010, he was jailed for crashing his Range Rover into a shop front while under the influence of drugs. He checked himself into a 14-day detox at a clinic after the crash, and later explained that he had been addicted to sleeping tablets.
In 2013, he was again said to be in a rehab clinic in Australia. He did not deny or confirm this.
Not long afterwards he fell out of a car on the M1 motorway and was airlifted to hospital with a head injury.
You can only hope that, buoyed by his long stay in Zurich, he will finally emerge from the painful cycle of despair, addiction and depression which has gripped him for so long.
Daily Mail