+ Exclusive

Billy T

the
untold
story

A television movie in August

depicting the love story of
Billy T James and his wife Lynn has
so incensed the late entertainers
family and friends theyve broken
a 20-year silence to reveal the
truth about his marriage of secrets
and lies. By Donna Chisholm.

he night before the first of the

heart attacks that would ultimately irreparably damage his
heart, Billy T James took his
teenaged daughter Cherie out
clubbing in Queen St.
Cherie, drunk on Miami Coolers, barfed
onto the road from his black Toyota Supra
while it was stopped at the Hobson St lights,
just before the on-ramp to Aucklands
Northwestern Motorway.
Billy was half cut, as well drink-drive
wasnt top of mind back then. He laid a solicitous hand on her back. You OK, Bub?
As Cherie rested her head on her arms at
the open window, another car pulled up
alongside. Its passengers instantly recognised the star at the wheel, and the jeering
and laughter began as they took in the beautiful young woman beside him.
Geez, Billy, doesnt look like youre going
to score tonight, eh?
Cherie, a feisty 15, lifted her head and
shouted back. You dirty bastards, its my
father. Im his daughter! Im his daughter!
The year was 1988. But now, on the 20th
anniversary of her fathers death, as his life
story is retold and reinvented for big screen
and small, Cherie Ruby James finds herself
having to shout exactly the same thing.
After steadfastly refusing to co-operate
in media stories about her famous father,
she says she can no longer tolerate the
myths and misconceptions that the public
has been fed about his final years.
I feel like an imposter in my own life.
Opposite: Father and daughter
Billy T and Cherie photographed
in 1990, a year before he died.

DONNA CHISHOLM is north & South S EDITOR-AT-LARGE. WAIHEKE photography by KEN DOWNIE.
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At the time Billy

died, his wife
Lynn had recently
left a two-year de
facto relationship
with another man.
largely slipped out of their lives at least five
years earlier. At the time Billy died, Lynn
had recently left a two-year de facto relationship with another man. That man, who
we have agreed not to name, confirmed he
was living with her in Devonport at the time
of Billys heart bypass operation in 1988.
I thought I was in love with her, he said.
He told us Lynn always referred to Billy
as her ex husband. Told that the movie
suggested she and Billy had a close and loving relationship until he died, the man said:
Thats crap. Im sorry, but thats crap.
North & South approached Lynn Matthews during the preparation of this story
and told her that family members and
friends were speaking to us about what they
regarded as the charade of the last years
of the marriage. Lynn said she had never
sought publicity, that she had a career, and
that such a story would not be helpful.

Sisters Lesley (left) and Lynn Matthews with Billy before

the Entertainer of the Year ball in 1981.

e all thought we knew, didnt

we, that there was something just a bit odd about
the private life of muchloved comic Billy T James.
In the absence of any explanation during
his lifetime, gossip and innuendo flourished
after his death: that maybe he was shacked
up with the sister-in-law and the wife in
some sort of weird love triangle; that daughter Cherie was variously his niece, his biological daughter, his adopted daughter.
Of the key players who knew what was
really going on, three werent talking and
the fourth was dead.
We might have expected the truth to
finally emerge this winter, when an
anniversary tribute to James appeared in
cinemas with the documentary Billy T Te
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Movie, and TVNZ screened the dramatised

biopic Billy. But it has not.
Te Movie avoids his private life altogether,
apart from a mention of his 1973 marriage
to Lynn Matthews, while the portrayal of
that marriage in Sunday Theatres Billy has
so enraged those closest to the star that they
want, at last, to set the record straight.
Of all the scenes in the telly movie, its the
opening one that upsets Cherie the most. Its
one of the few in which Cherie unarguably
the person closest to Billy in his final years
appears. Shes shown at her dying fathers
bedside at Green Lane Hospital, holding his
hand and saying gently, Dad. Its OK, Dad.
Lynn will be back soon.
For Cherie, theres one big problem with
this: Lynn hadnt just briefly slipped out of
the hospital as the script implied. She had

n a later letter from her agent Tim

Moon to this magazines editor, she
said she had moved out of the family
home for very good reasons. When
her husband became ill, she remained at his bedside and he died
in her arms. This was, said Moon,
an important and incontrovertible insight
into their relationship.
Ms Matthews loved her husband in life
and in death and is greatly hurt that others
seek to denigrate his memory for selfish
purposes 20 years after his passing.
She had chosen not to speak publicly
about her life with Billy, he said. That
remains her position.
While it is true that Lynn Matthews has
always avoided publicity, there are two
projects with which she co-operated: the
2009 book by Matt Elliott, The Life and Times
of Billy T James, and the TV biopic Billy,
which is based on the book. She saw a copy
of the script of the movie before filming and
the final cut before its release, and raised
no concerns.
Lesley Matthews Waiheke
home is a virtual shrine to her
memories of Billy T James.

George Andrews

Above: Lesley, Billy and Cherie at the farm in Muriwai

on Billys 40th birthday in 1989.
Right: Cherie and Billy in army gear on location
in Wanganui for his TV series in 1986.
Opposite page: Cherie and Billy in 1990 during filming
of The James Gang Rides Again.

Publicity about the movie quotes Lynn

Matthews as saying Billy was very accurate. There are so many stories floating
around about Billy, things that never happened but are being perpetuated.
She added: I wish some of the things
were made up, but that was what life was
like for us
Cherie and her mother Lesley Matthews
Lynns sister and Billys best friend want
the 730,000 people who watched the film
to know that, in the later years at least, it
was not. After 20 years holding close the
familys secrets and refusing to talk about
the rifts that have set sister against sister
and daughter against aunt, they say they
cant stay silent any longer.

herie James was born in May

1973 on her mother Lesleys
17th birthday. Lesley met Billy
for the first time when Lynn
brought her then-fianc up to
Russell to meet their three-month-old niece.
Billy had what I thought was a nice new
car, Lesley says. He said to me it would
have been a better one but hed bought Lynn
an engagement ring with the money hed
saved for a car.
Billy and Lynn wed in Auckland in October 1973, and when Lesleys marriage to
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Cheries biological father collapsed, and

Billy went on a two-year tour to Australia
and England with the Maori Volcanics,
Lesley and three-year-old Cherie moved in
with Lynn in St Heliers.
When Billy came home, Lesley and Cherie
returned to Russell, where Lesley and
Lynns parents died soon after. Cherie was
often sent to Auckland to stay with Uncle
Billy and Aunty Lynn.
In my heart of hearts, I really did want
them to be my parents, my family, Cherie
recalls. With Mum being young, and then
coping with the grief of losing her parents,
and not knowing how to process that intellectually or perhaps spiritually, Mum wasnt
necessarily emotionally very available. So
being with them was just like being in the
sunshine. It was so happy, so loving, so fun.
In 1983, when Cherie was 10, Billy and
Lynn took her on tour in the South Island.
They said, Well just say were mum and
dad, and I called them Mum and Dad and
had the time of my life. Going home, I was
heartbroken; I think I cried for days.
By 1984, Lesley and Cherie had moved in
with Billy and Lynn at their rented home

in Titirangi, but soon after, Lesley resumed

her on-off relationship with a man none of
them approved of and moved back in with
him in west Auckland. When Mum decided
she would rekindle the relationship with
this man, I wouldnt go with her. Dad and
Lynn said, Youre staying with us. I was
stoked, stoked. Thats exactly where I wanted
to be. It was like coming home.

ith Lesleys blessing, Lynn

and Billy began the process
of adopting Cherie, but soon
after Cherie thinks in early
1985 Lynn announced she was moving out
for a month or two to clear her head.
Cherie says apart from brief periods after
this, Lynn never lived permanently with Billy
again. I dont think he was heartbroken or
devastated, Cherie says, but I dont think
he wanted her to go.
Despite this, the adoption plans continued,
with Social Welfare insisting the couple had
to own their own home first. In July 1986
at the height of Billys television fame he
and Lynn bought 33 Koromiko Rd, Titirangi,
just a few doors from the rented house they

had been living in.

In meetings with Social Welfare, the family agreed to maintain the faade of togetherness. But when the approval came through
to proceed, both Cherie and Billy had doubts
about Lynn.
Dad came to me and said, When this
goes through, Lynn is your legal mother,
your legal guardian, and she has a say in
your life until youre 18. How do you feel
about that? I said I didnt want her to be
my mum, that I just wanted him to adopt
me. He said he wanted to but they wouldnt
let him do it on his own.
The adoption documents were left unsigned. At heart, if not in blood, they were
already father and daughter.
Says Billys lawyer, Sandi Anderson:
They chose each other. Billy chose her as
his daughter and she chose him as her dad.
And who needed a piece of paper to tell
them what they already knew?
With Lesleys relationship off again in
1987, she moved back in with her daughter
and Billy when he bought a farm at Muriwai.
For Cherie, it was the perfect family unit
as important to her dad as it was to her.

At her Waiheke home, in a lounge which

is a virtual shrine to Billy T James, Lesley
Matthews opens a letter he wrote to her
and Cherie as he waited for his heart
transplant in 1989. Its in neat, sloping script
on pages that have been read and reread
dozens of times.
First of all, you two have got to know that
I love you both with all my heart and Bub
more than anyone or anything in this world.
I cant help that, its just the way it is and I
would do absolutely anything for you both...
Remember how much I love you, youre my
family and I will support you and look after
you for as long as. Love yous.
Lesley replaces the precious pages in an
envelope alongside a tiny square of blue
tissue paper. She opens this, too. Inside is
a lock of his hair she cut off after he died.
Despite the closeness of their friendship,
Lesley says she and Billy never had a sexual
relationship, nor was she ever attracted to
him in that way. I adored him from the day
I met him. I adored him but not sexually.
I often wonder why I didnt fancy him, but
sex was low down on his list. Billy told me
he didnt give a shit about sex thats why

They chose
each other. Billy
chose her as his
daughter and
she chose him
as her dad.

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Extracts from a letter Billy wrote to Lesley and Cherie as he waited for a heart transplant.

we had a perfect relationship. You dont find

many people in your life who love your child
as their own.
While most relationships tend to flourish
during the good times and founder in the
bad, Lynn Matthews and Billy T James
marriage seemed to work the other way
around.
No one denies she loved, supported and
believed in him in those early years as a
struggling young entertainer on the road.
Paradoxically, she became more distant
from him the more he became what she
always believed he would be famous and
successful.
Comedian Peter Rowley, one of Billys
closest friends during the mid-1980s, believes that was because Lynn lost power
in the relationship. Where once she had
been the Pakeha woman able to open doors
for her Maori husband remember this was
in the days when landlords would openly
deny accommodation on racial grounds
now she was, in Rowleys opinion, surplus
to requirements.
When Billy became popular it was like,
Come on in! He was the one with the power,
he was the one with all the kudos.
Though the television movie shows Lynn
turning up on the set of the wildly successful Billy T James Show, Rowley says she
never appeared there to his knowledge, nor
did he see her when he lived at Billys house,
sometimes for seven weeks at a time, when
they were collaborating on scripts in 1985
and 1986. I saw her once during that time,
leaving the house one day in 1985. I never
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saw her there again.

Its easy to understand why the couple
would pretend their marriage was intact in
order to adopt. But after that plan was finally shelved about 1987, its difficult to see
why they did not formalise a separation.
Part of the answer lies in Billys person
ality. He was never one to formalise much
at all and famously shied away from
confrontation of any kind, while enlisting
others such as Rowley at work to fight
his battles for him. It suited him, too, to
avoid the publicity of a breakup when
simply being famous was burden enough.
Lesley Matthews says Billy believed in
marriage and wanted to emulate the relationship his parents had.
To the familys knowledge, Billy had no
other serious relationships. Cherie and Peter
Rowley recall a couple of brief flings. He
brought one woman out to stay at the farm
for a weekend and put her in a separate bedroom, says Cherie. I was 15, and I was like,
Jesus, Dad, put her in your room! He was,
she says, very proper.
The fiction of the conventional marriage
was something that both the entertainer
and his wife strove to maintain.
Various explanations were given for
Lynns absence, most commonly that she
was frequently travelling in her job in the
hotel industry, and that she had to maintain
an apartment in the city because it was too
far to commute from the farm at Muriwai.
Another was that she was allergic to the
privet that grew there.
By the time Billy fell ill in 1988, his daugh-

ter had long been the most important person

in his life. Yet Elliotts book, which repeatedly refers to her as Billys niece despite
Billy himself always calling her his daughter
contains comments implying her motives
were less than pure. It described her as
gravitating more and more to Billy as a new
father figure who could lavish attention and
money on her.
To those closest to the comedian, the undermining of Cheries role is a grievous
wrong that must be put right.
There was a love between them that
Lynn couldnt get near, says Rowley. Way
more love developed for Cherie in the appropriate sense, I might add than there
ever was for Lynn. Cherie showed loyalty
that Lynn was never able to; Cherie showed
caring that Lynn was never able to. There
was total adoration for each other, total.
Unconditional love. It was a wonderful
thing, really beautiful. Imagine Billy without Cherie: he would have been such a
lonely man it would have been shocking.
It was Cherie, not Lynn, who stayed with
Billy for three months in Green Lane Hospital as he awaited his transplant and Cherie
who ultimately allowed his body to be taken
by his Tainui relatives to Turangawaewae
Marae for a tangi so he could be buried next
to his mother Ruby on Taupiri Mountain.
Billy wanted to be buried there but hadnt
wanted a tangi.
Cherie says when the relatives, led by an
uncle, Bill Awa, arrived at the Muriwai farm
to take the body, she, Lesley and Lynn told
them no. I said he wants to be next to
his mother on Taupiri. They were saying,
Dont you understand? You should understand, you cant go on to our sacred mountain without [the tangi].
I was aware enough that you cant do
that. I didnt do it to spite Lynn but I was
the closest one to him. He loved me more
than anything and he would have entrusted
me with this decision. So I thought, to get
him there [to Taupiri], he has to go. And I
wasnt going without him.
So it was Cherie who sat with him through
out the tangi, drawing strength from him by
touching his body in the casket. I needed
that because I was there with thousands of
strangers. I needed to hold on to him, thinking, Oh my God, Dad, oh my God.
Says Anderson: The only thing Billy
would want us to do as friends is to acknowledge the importance of the relationship he had with his daughter. If there was
any legacy he would want us to protect, it
was that she was important and valuable

and she shouldnt be marginalised by Lynn.

In his acknowledgments, Elliott thanks
Lynn Matthews for allowing his book to be
the vehicle for her first public reminiscences about her husband and says her
memories are remarkably clear.
Elliott told North & South he did not know
that Lynn had effectively left her husband,
or that she was living with another man.
Nothing that Lynn or any other interviewee
told me led me to think anything like that
had been the situation.
He said while he knew Lynn was living
in town rather than in Muriwai with Billy,
he thought it was for logistical reasons related to her job. He said he tried to interview Lesley and Cherie for the book, but
he could not reach Lesley, while Cherie
declined to be interviewed. No one had
contacted him post-publication to raise
those issues with him.
As Moon has done 20 years on, Elliott
noted in his book that Billy died in the arms
of wife and number one fan Lynn.
But Cherie, 18 when he died, recalls things
differently. While she agrees Lynn was there
when he died, she says, He did die in the
arms of his number one fan me. She says
Billy was sitting up struggling to breathe in
the minutes before he passed away, and
brought his legs over the side of the hospital
bed where he sat, with Lynn on one side
rubbing his back. Cherie, sitting in a chair
next to the bed, realised his end was near.
She knelt on the floor between his legs, put
her arms around his waist and rested her
head on his heart as it beat for the last time.

im Hegan, son of Billys long-time

manager Elaine Hegan, and himself road manager on many of the
comics tours, describes the
docu-drama based on Elliotts book as the
canonisation of St Lynn.
Hegan, who worked closely with Billy
from 1984, says he rarely saw Lynn in those
years but believed his mothers explanations
that her absences were because of her work.
The movies version of Lynns role in
Billys career was a myth, he says. She
was a very minor player. But, says Hegan,
Lynn was a good friend of his mother, and
was often at their home for cups of tea.
Mum was very influenced by Lynn.
Hegan now suspects that Billys attempts
to replace his mother as his manager may
have been an attempt to distance his financial affairs from Lynn.
In Elliotts book, Hegan is quoted saying
it all came unstuck when lawyer Sandi

Minder Rick Harris and Billy in Green Lane Hospital, Auckland, before his heart transplant.

Anderson and others got in and tried to take

charge of his career. After the TV movie,
Hegan called Anderson to apologise.
While so-called dramatic licence is always employed to liven drearier truths in
the cause of a sexier fiction, how much is too
much especially when the public will largely believe the televised version of events?
We asked Billy producer Tony Holden if
the story was accurate. It was based on the
book, he replied. We asked him again, was
it accurate? It was based on the book, he
said again.
Then he added that at the end of the film
credits the standard disclaimer rolled the
one about events and individuals being
changed for dramatic reasons. When you
are trying to cover an entire life, Holden
told us, there are things you leave out.
Holden, who produced the highly successful Billy T James-Peter Rowley television
shows from 1985 to 1987, says he had only a
professional relationship with the entertainers and relied on the books take on events.
However, Rowley told North & South he
had a lunch with Holden during which the
producer told him he was making a movie
based on the Elliott book and Rowley warned
him the book did not have the full story. He
believed a production that received $2.4 million of NZ on Air funds should have stuck to
the facts.
Lawyer Mick Sinclair, who took over Billys
affairs in 1989 when Anderson went overseas,
also told us he telephoned a senior contact at
TVNZ about the risk of basing the movie on
the book. I said if you do intend using this

book to verify facts, youre going to have to be

careful that what you do pull out is accurate.
I cant demand this or that, but it was my request of them.
Sinclair said though the book was largely
on Billys early life, I was aware it sanitised
some of the more unpleasant aspects of the
family dynamics.
He said one of the best things hed ever
done for the family was to keep everything
below the radar, to keep the personal side
of their lives, and the family, out of the limelight for a long time.
Sinclair, who manages the trust set up after
Billys death to benefit Lynn and Cherie in
equal measure, says that like Anderson
he tried to get the entertainer to make a will,
to clarify his chaotic affairs.
Billy had always avoided the issue, he
says, but Sinclair didnt push it with him,
partly because by the time he came on the
scene, Billy had a $200,000 Inland Revenue
debt, a farm property in hock to the hilt,
and very little else. Billy had taken equity
out of the farm when he was ill and
couldnt work, and nothing was left when
it finally went under the hammer at a mortgagee sale a few months after his death in
August 1991.
Theres confusion over the comedians
so-called intellectual property and how
much this might be worth. Rights to the
programmes Billy starred in are mostly
owned by TVNZ or other production houses, such as Isambard. TVNZ has, however,
decided those who want to reproduce its
clips must not only pay its footage licensing
N O R T H & S O U T H | N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 1 | 7 3

Cherie, who had a successful acting career for several years, now lives with her long-time
partner on a farmlet in the South Island.

fees but get the consent of the trust, to

which royalties may also be paid.
About $90,000 was raised for Lynn and
Cherie in a benefit concert shortly after
Billys death. Since then, at least the same
amount again has been raised for the trust
from a series of successful videos and DVDs,
including The Comic Genius of Billy T James
and The Best of Billy T.
But the comics widow, who gained letters
of administration for his estate shortly after
his death, has vigilantly policed the projects
and issued legal threats.
Sinclair, the lawyer for the cinema release
Billy T: Te Movie, and Rowley and Anderson
have received legal letters from Tim Moon
of Pagan Records, the man Lynn has ap7 4 | N O R T H & S O U T H | N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 1

pointed as her agent for intellectual property and who wrote on her behalf to North
& South.
In Rowleys case, Moon was complaining
about the release of his DVD Billy T and Me.
The letters claimed they were required to
obtain the consent of the administrator of
the late Billy T James estate before doing
anything with William Taitokos intellectually property, be that performance, biographical likeness, literary, music or other
creative copyrights.
To Rowley and Anderson, Moon wrote:
Ms Matthews is disgusted and insulted
at your lack of respect to her husband and
herself... In her opinion Peter [Rowley] is
trading on the successful profile of her

husband and she will act to stop this from

happening both legally and in the public
forum. Peters callous actions will reflect
very badly on his reputation.
Anderson and Sinclair say they both responded, asking Moon and Matthews to
detail what intellectual property rights they
thought they had breached. They did not
receive a reply.
Cherie James and her actor-arts producer
partner Charlie Unwin left Auckland in May
for a new life in the South Island. They live
quietly and anonymously on a small farmlet
with their four cats and a mangy male
hedgehog called Priscilla, which theyre
nursing back to health.
Cherie met Charlie at drama school 13
years ago and theyve never been apart
since. After graduating from the Unitec
course, Cherie starred in a number of film
and television productions and was nominated for two acting awards. She has since
abandoned her acting career.
Unlike her mum Lesley, Cherie has just
one photo of Billy, on a shelf in her bedroom.
Its in monochrome and his face is wreathed
in the cheekiest of grins.
We were in a Cessna flying off to one of
his shows. As soon as the door shut, Dad let
off this really huge fart, and were all shut
into this little plane and Dads going Haaaaa
and Mum took the picture.
The cabinet under the telly doesnt have
a single DVD of his shows. Cherie doesnt
watch them. Nor has she seen the cinema
tribute to her dad although she did watch,
and suffer through, the television movie.
Ironically, she and Charlie were once close
to the actor Tainui Tukiwaho, who played
Billy in the show. Cherie says Tukiwaho knew
she didnt want him to take the part, and their
friendship has not survived his involvement
in the movie although Charlie believes it
was only through Tukiwahos intervention
that scriptwriters changed the description of
Cherie from niece to daughter.
Cherie hasnt read the Elliott book she
went into a bookshop to sneak a look when
it came out and found the line near the end
that made her knees buckle with grief. It
said Billy T James died childless.
The public face of her father is one she
does not need to remember. She prefers to
carry him, and her memories, inside.
Its part of the reason shes changed her
name, in recent years, to Ruby. Its the name
of Billys mother, the woman he once loved
the most.
Now its the name of the two women he
loved the best. 
+

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