Elton John’s number one Furnish

The profile of Elton John’s long-suffering spouse in Toronto Life, titled An Ideal Husband, must be cherished as a true artifact of this era – because someday, in the not too distant future, the less famous half of a gay male pairing can be portrayed with the same scorn and ridicule as one of Rod Stewart’s wives would be. For now, David Furnish remains just slightly beyond reproach, credited with salvaging his soulmate from what might’ve been a bloated, drug-addled and depressive descent into oblivion. But those qualities are also what singer-songwriter immortality is made of – and Elton spent the earlier part of this decade thinking he could swing both ways, releasing introspective albums in spite of living an increasingly ostentatious lifestyle, then left frustrated by the fact that his audience only wanted to hear the old hits. Whether or not Furnish can be blamed for this delusion is unclear, but his role as godfather to the children of Elizabeth Hurley and Victoria Beckham suggests this Scarborough boy has fulfilled his destiny as Britain’s greatest enabler of asinine celebrity antics. One of Furnish’s friends even took the liberty to invite Farrah Fawcett to David and Elton’s house in Nice, because who wouldn’t enjoy having Farrah stagger around their living room for a weekend? Based on this feature, the pre-Elton experiences of Furnish weren’t leading to much fulfillment – of course he’s now remembered by early-’80s classmates at Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate in Agincourt for his penchant for sporting Ray-Bans, Polo shirts and Vidal Sassoon haircuts before anybody else, although the article by Ellen Himelfarb depicts a man who’d be trudging through the ranks of the advertising industry were it not for access to the disposable income required to buy fiberglass statues with a penis in place of a nose. Thankfully, feigning affection for an older woman is no longer required to secure such economic status.

An Ideal Husband [Toronto Life]