It’s still impossible to process the news that Ewen is gone.
I can’t lay claim to being his best buddy or his confidante. In fact, there were times when our relationship was an uneasy one – me, the journalist, and he, the Kiwi star I was often pressing to share a story he wasn’t ready to tell.
There have been discussions over the years that were difficult for us both and, for the record, there’s one in particular of which I’m not proud. But it never affected the professional and personal bond we had, and
that alone is testament to Ewen’s character.
He was never much good at email, but he’d call me up with a jovial “Hey, mate” and then proceed to give me an update on his life, a new comedy tour or an idea for a piece I could write on the charity he was 100% behind, 100% of the time – Variety.
Ewen shared a close bond with his mum Janet.
A year after his amazing wife Cathy passed away following a painful battle with invasive brain cancer, he bashfully confided to me he was dating again. That relationship ran its course, but in recent months he’d met another special lady, Bernadette – a woman who now grieves for Ewen, just as his family, friends and fans do.
Ewen and I first met in 2006. My partner (now husband) and I had moved in to the house next door to the Gilmour family home in West Auckland. Ewen had been raised there. His mum, Janet, still lives next door to me now – a fabulous neighbour, the sort that notices your tomatoes have all ripened while you’re on summer holiday so whips over for a quick harvest and makes them into chutney, delivering it to your doorstep as you pull up the driveway.
Ewen and Cathy were regular visitors, sometimes arriving by thundering motorbike, other times in the enormous red limo he used for promotional work.
Speaking of cars, one of my fondest memories of Ewen is the day I came home from work on my son’s first birthday and discovered tyre tracks across the lawn, the glass door smashed and precious items stolen. I rang Janet to see if she’d seen anything – she said she hadn’t, but that Ewen was about and popped him on the line.
Ewen and Cathy bravely shared their enormous struggle with Fiona and the Weekly readers.
“I don’t suppose you saw a car in our driveway this afternoon?” I asked him. “The police are asking.”
“Sure. Nissan Skyline, silver, I’d say a 2005 model,” he shot back without a moment’s hesitation. Once a petrolhead…
When beautiful Cathy was told she had cancer, Ewen spoke exclusively to me about it. I wrote a story for the Weekly detailing the enormity of the couple’s struggle. I was proud of it because, I felt, it was an unfrilly account using the sort of plain language Ewen was known for. I won a journalism award for the story and I’ve always been so honoured they gave me the permission to tell it.
As the years went on and Cathy improved, then faltered, then sadly passed away, I continued my relationship with Ewen. Interviews were conducted at the couple’s sunlit Port Waikato home, dogs lounging at our feet. Or, sometimes, at our place, at the kitchen table.
Photoshoots with Ewen were not as straightforward. I learned after my first shoot with him not to bother bringing a stylist.
“I just want to look like me,” Ewen wailed on one occasion, shunning the tailored collared shirts the stylist had lugged out to the Port and changing into some sort of wrinkled tunic he’d picked up in (I believe) Peru. The art director had stipulated he wear colour and outside of his wardrobe of black T-shirts, this was the only coloured item he owned.
One of the things I loved most about Ewen was that he was a hugger. And that he had a poodle. It was like Rupert was his own private in-joke. The incongruity of New Zealand’s most beloved Westie owning a poodle was not lost on him.
Cheeky biker Ewen with his mum Janet.
And he was generous – so generous. That conversation I mentioned, right at the beginning, happened after I wrote an article about Cathy’s passing. It was not the article that Ewen took issue with – it was the inclusion of something he’d told me over a beer one night. He was drowning in sorrow when he picked up the phone. He was drowning his sorrows too. He was pissed, and pissed off, feeling I’d blurred the line between a casual chat and publishable information.
I retaliated, defended myself, and then tossed and turned all night feeling devastated that I’d hurt someone I admired so greatly. I spoke to his agent and friend Hilary Coe about it. She told me to give him some space, and she was right. The next time we spoke, I told him I was so regretful about the discussion.
“Mate, it’s in the past. Forgotten. We’re all good,” he said with his trademark warmth.
I’m thankful Ewen died with many of his dreams fulfilled. One wasn’t. He had wondered if he’d be a good father. The medication Cathy took to stymie the growth of her astrocytoma meant she was not able to fall pregnant. After her death, Ewen told me it had occurred to him that children with somebody new could be in his future. I wish he’d had the opportunity. Because yes, Ewen, you’d have made an amazing dad.
