Former island resident helping Johnny Depp in his libel case
A DISGRACED celebrity therapist and former Guernsey resident has been supporting Pirates of the Caribbean actor Johnny Depp in his libel case against ex-wife Amber Heard
Beechy Colclough, 73, pictured, helped Sir Elton John battle his problems with alcohol, cocaine, over-eating and bulimia and it was because of him that Sir Elton played an unannounced and unadvertised gig at the Fermain Tavern in the summer of 1990.
In a preface for the Irishman’s 1993 book ‘Tomorrow I’ll be Different’, Sir Elton said he and Mr Colclough had become ‘dear friends.
Mr Colclough, who reportedly also helped Michael Jackson, Kate Moss, John Thaw, Robbie Williams, Caroline Aherne and Michael Barrymore, was struck off the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy register in 2006 after female patients claimed he had sex with them.
A regular drinker from the age of 14, Mr Colclough first came to Guernsey in search of seasonal work because he had heard that alcohol was cheap. At the age of 35 he underwent a six-week recovery programme to combat his alcohol addiction at a rehab centre in Devon.
In the early 1980s he returned to Guernsey and got a job as a kitchen porter in the newly opened St Pierre Park Hotel. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a chef, and was put in charge of the hotel’s brasserie. After about two years at the hotel he began training as an addiction counsellor.
By the mid 1990s he had a weekly slot on GMTV and was seeing patients at a clinic off Harley Street.
Mr Colclough has been pictured coming and going with Depp from Fairfax County Court, Virginia, where the case is being heard.
