The lonely Liberace I knew To be truthful, I was not an admirer of his style on the piano, or the way in which he tended to murder the classics. What was clear was that he was a great showman and audiences adored him. If he got a bad notice, he would shrug and say: "I laughed all the way to the bank." And, in later years: "I no longer laugh all the way to the bank. I bought the bank! I never paid to see one of his shows. He always sent me tickets. In the interval, iced vintage champagne would arrive. He once bought me a ring and a designer jacket. I never wore either. The ring was huge and could have stopped traffic. The jacket was encrusted with bugle beads. Whenever I went to America, I used to visit him at The Cloisters, his home in Palm Springs. Its décor was glitzy, garish and incredibly vulgar, a bit like a high-class bordello, but his hospitality was legendary. In spite of his huge wealth and massive fame, however, I always sensed an air of deep loneliness, as if his life was somehow hollow. Born Wladziu Valentino Liberace, the son of a Polish mother and an impoverished Italian emigrant, he began playing the piano at four, was adjudged a prodigy able to memorise difficult pieces by the age of seven, and studied the technique of the great Polish pianist Ignacy Paderewski. At 20, he was soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and by 1950, with his giant-sized, gold-leafed Bluthner Grand piano, topped by the candelabra that became his trademark, he was entertaining President Harry Truman at the White House, and earning gigantic fees at private parties for the super-rich, such as J Paul Getty. But it was television that made him a millionaire matinée idol. The Liberace Show, which first aired in 1952, drew more than 30 million viewers, mostly women, and he received 10,000 fan letters a week. His first two years" earnings from television totalled $7 million. His intimate, familiar and sometimes gushing personal style conveyed reassurance to closet gays in an age of homophobia. One biographer informs us: "Liberace was the first gay person Elton John had ever seen on television. He became his hero. The only problem was that for his army of adoring female fans, he wasn't supposed to be gay. Ostensibly a devout Catholic, he was received in audience by Pope Pius XII. Publicists frantically linked his name with a number of women, including Elizabeth Taylor's stand-in, Joanne Rio; Norwegian ice skater Sonja Henie, seven years his senior; the notorious American transsexual Christine Jorgenson; and, most preposterously of all, the ageing Hollywood icon Mae West, 26 years his senior. But Liberace's real sexuality was an open secret in showbusiness. By the time of his visit to London in 1956, comment on his lifestyle was becoming overt. On the day after his arrival, the Daily Mirror columnist William Connor, writing under his pen name, Cassandra, launched a vitriolic attack, describing him as "the summit of sex - the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that he, she and it can ever want... this deadly, winking, sniggering, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother-love... This appalling man. Liberace sued for libel. In court, he denied he was a homosexual, and Connor insisted he had not intended to suggest this. The jury did not believe Connor. They awarded Liberace £8,000 in damages and £14,000 in costs. He had lied on oath to save his career. It was not until 20 years later that his cover was finally blown for ever. That process began on the night in 1977 that a friend brought the 18-year-old Scott Thorson into Liberace's dressing-room at the Las Vegas Hilton. The two men lived together for four years, but the relationship between "Libby"" and "Boober"" - their names for each other - soon became acrimonious. Thorson blamed this on Liberace's promiscuity and his obsession with pornography. Liberace accused Thorson of addiction to cocaine, carrying firearms through airports in his luggage, and possessing a Jekyll and Hyde personality. In April 1982, when Thorson caught Liberace with an 18-year-old boy, there was a violent altercation that resulted in Thorson being forcibly evicted from the pianist's home and the locks being changed. Thorson responded by bringing a "palimony"" suit against Liberace for $380 million. In the court hearings and articles Thorson wrote for the National Enquirer, shocking details emerged that stripped away Liberace's legendary glitter. The pianist, Thorson revealed, was almost totally bald, but was so vain that he wore his toupé to bed. He dressed "like a slouch" at home, and had had two major facelifts. Thorson also alleged that Liberace had forced him to undergo plastic surgery, including a cleft inserted in his chin, and silicone injections to make his cheeks more outstanding. The pianist wanted to adopt him, but planned to keep having sex with him. The legal battle dragged on until December 1986, when Thorson settled for a payment of $95,000 plus two dogs, a 1977 White Auburn car and a 1960 gold Rolls-Royce. By then, Liberace had a mere two months to live. After his final stage appearance at New York's Radio City Music Hall on November 2 1986, and his last TV appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show on Christmas Day 1986, Liberace returned to his winter home in Palm Springs, where he died on February 4 1987, at the age of 67. Shortly before his death, he asked Scott Thorson to see him, and there was a limited reconciliation. It was stated that Liberace had died from congestive heart failure brought on by subacute encephalopathy, a general term for degenerative brain disease. But when Forest Lawn cemetery applied for a permit to bury him, the Riverside County coroner, Raymond Carillo, demanded tissue tests, even though the body had been embalmed. Carillo then announced that Liberace had "died from cytomegalovirus pneumonia due to, or as a consequence of, human immunodeficiency virus disease... In layman's terms, Mr Liberace died of an opportunistic disease caused by acquired immune deficiency syndrome." All his life had been a gigantic cover-up of the one truth he was unwilling to share with his vast and idolising public. But in death, the mask was stripped away. And the secrets of one of the world's richest but most complex entertainers were finally laid bare. As Behind the Candelabra premiered in Cannes this week, Scott Thorson, now 54 and suffering from cancer, was nowhere to be seen. He is serving a prison sentence in Reno for credit card theft.