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Talk
about kicking a guy while he's down. It wasn't enough that soggy,
shaken Simon Le Bon, 26, and his brother Jonathan, 20, had narrowly
escaped death. Suddenly, the millionaire singer was faced with the
insurance problem. The problem was, there wasn't any insurance.
It seems that when Le Bon and partners Paul and Michael Berrow (the
brothers who manage Duran Duran) purchased the 77-foot state-of-the-art
Maxi yacht last March, they decided a $40,800 annual premium was
too high to pay. Are they sorry? "Of course," said a dejected Le
Bon.
Twenty-four hours later the British press jumped on Le Bon's case
with both feet. Headlines like "Simon Snubs Hero Who Saved Him"
blared from tabloid pages. The stories claimed that Le Bon had stood
up Navy Pretty Officer Larry Slater, the diver who rescued him.
Rubbish, countered Le Bon, who promised the two would meet "soon."
And they did--last Tuesday night at the Falmouth Hotel, where Le
Bon was recuperating from his ordeal.
If that wasn't enough, there was talk that Princess Diana had been
quietly intimating that Duran Duran was no longer her favorite group.
She doesn't even really like the band, say those in the know; she
reportedly prefers Phil Collins and Dire Straits.
Le Bon's horrendous week may be over, but his headaches are just
beginning. He and his partners are still overseeing salvage operations.
The price tag could be enormous: There is speculation that towing
and repairs could cost more than $400,000. Nevertheless, they hope
to fix the boat in time for next month's perilous 27,000-mile Round-the-World
Whitbread Race, which has been called "every sailor's Everest."
What caused the Fastnet mishap? It's still a mystery. The boat's
designer, New Zealander Ron Holland, 38, flew in from Ireland last
week to inspect the remains. He is "totally mystified," he says,
calling the accident "a freak." The crew's captain, American Skip
Novak, a respected racing veteran who met Le Bon last fall at the
Swan World Cup in Sardinia, hinted that the accident might have
been caused by a structural flaw. "You should be able to drive the
boat to hell and back and not have the keel fall off," he declared.
Le Bon has dreamed of sailing ever since a vicar took him on an
outing to the Norfolk Broads as a schoolboy. As his passion for
the sport has grown--he now divides his time almost equally between
music and sailing--so has his parents' concern. "Ever since we realized
Simon wanted to sail, we have been bracing ourselves for something
like this," says his mother, Anne. Still, John Le Bon believes a
man's got to do what a man's got to do. "They look upon it as a
challenge," he allows of his sailing sons. "My only advice to them
is to keep an eye on each other."
The elder Le Bons were home watching TV when the news came. "We
got a mysterious phone call from someone who said, 'You are going
to hear something on the news that there has been an accident to
the Drum,'" Anne recalls. "'It is bad news but everyone is safe.'"
Then the caller hung up before the Le Bons could get his name. Anne
chose to stay by the telephone, stifling the impulse to play pop-star-momma
prima donna. During the wait, she took calls of support from a member
of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the drier members of Duran Duran.
The wait also proved to be a nail-biter for Le Bon's new girlfriend,
Manhattan-based Yasmin Parvaneh, 20. She had happily joined her
parents in Cowes, a resort town where the race began, to wish her
dreamboat and his dream boat Le Bon Voyage. "It was an agonizing
wait that got worse when we heard that some were trapped inside
the hull," reports Yasmin's mother, Patricia. "Luckily, he is a
very tough young man."
Hours later the Le Bons got a we're okay call from Jonathan, while
Simon handled the press. Later he telephoned home as well. "Neither
knew if the other was alive," says Anne. "The hardest thing for
me was knowing that both boys were in pain for each other. They
are very close."
After the rescue the crew was taken to the rickety, old-fashioned
resort of Falmouth, normally a tour haven for middle-aged Britishers.
Le Bon, with his new spiky dark-haired look and recently acquired
pudginess, seemed to go unnoticed by townspeople.
But then Falmouth had bigger problems than a thrill-seeking pop
star gone awry. "It's been a miserable season," said Gill Carpenter,
the assistant manager of the stately 73-room Falmouth Hotel. That
changed when the rescued crew and its entourage moved in. For Le
Bon, who is used to deluxe-deluxe accommodations, the hotel proved
to be an unexpected bargain: a room, plus breakfast and a three-course
dinner for a mere $50, including tax and tip.
The night of the rescue the ship's 24 crew members were joined by
teary-eyed girlfriends--including Yasmin--and wives who had rushed
to Falmouth for the reunion. After hearing the news Yasmin fled
the town of Hamble so quickly for the six-hour drive to Falmouth
that she didn't stop to pack extra clothes. She even had to hustle
bar patrons for toothpaste. But the mood was definitely upbeat.
A cheery party in the hotel bar lasted until 4 a.m. Le Bon and Yasmin
clutched hands throughout the night, and he kissed her frequently,
as if to reassure himself that he had indeed survived.
In all the chaos Le Bon missed a call from Boy George, but Duran
Duran's Nick Rhodes got through from a recording studio in
New York. "Hi, nice to know you are still alive, Simon,"
he told Le Bon. "When are you going to come back and finish the
mixing?"
By Monday night, 30 hours after the incident, life for the roguish
rocker was back to what passes for normal when you're an international
celebrity. That night he came racing into the hotel bar with a copy
of Vogue under one arm and Yasmin under the other. When Yasmin left
for a moment to powder her nose--or perhaps search out more toothpaste--he
began flipping wildly through the magazine and calling to his shipmates.
"Look at my bird's tits!" Le Bon moaned, pointing to one topless
layout. Upon Yasmin's return, he told her, "I'm going to draw a
bra on that one." Replied Yasmin, all too modestly: "But I've got
nothing to put in it."
Minutes later, with Yasmin hanging on his every word, Le Bon, wearing
a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt and toying with his sailor's bandanna,
traded tales of sea terror with his mates, as if he were an ancient
mariner who had survived his umpteenth shipwreck.
The pop star and the model seemed to take near-disaster well. "I
love dangerous things," Yasmin gushed.
"Like me," Le Bon said.
COPYRIGHT 1985 Time, Inc.
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