"The tale of Johnny Cash's home and girl named Sue"

 (The Scotsman, January 2007)

When your best pal is Linda Gibb, Bee Gee Barry's wife, you get to see people and go places denied to ordinary mortals.

Sue Lindsay is back home in West Lothian, telling me about her and husband Andrew's latest trip to Miami, meeting up again with Barry and Musselburgh-born Linda who live there (Robin Gibb lives virtually next door in a property familiar to the Blairs).

Says Sue: "Linda and Barry flew us to Nashville, just a couple of hours away, to show us what they've done so far with the house they'll treat as a vacation home during the hurricane season in Miami. They bought it from the Johnny Cash estate a year ago and it's fabulous . . on three floors, built into a rock and overhanging a lake.

"Johnny would often have some of the mega names in the business as guests.

"He also had a 'bell garden' crammed with bells where he'd marry people.

"The conversion won't be completed till later this year, so when Linda and Barry took us to Nashville - great city, with live music in every bar and restaurant - for a few days we stayed in a hotel favoured by the rich and famous.

"Rock super-group Aerosmith had just vacated our suite and Jon Bon Jovi was moving in directly we left. Imagine!"

Memo to the Lindsays: next time you're going over, I'll carry your bags."

 

"Fighting to give orphans a better life

 (Sandra Dick, The Scotsman, March 2007)

SUPERSTAR Michael Jackson strolled into Bee Gee Barry Gibb's fabulous Miami home and came to an abrupt halt. "Who's this?," he whispered shyly, nodding towards the woman waiting to meet him.

Sue Lindsay's eyes sparkle with excitement as she remembers the bizarre meeting with one of the world's most intriguing stars, acted out in the luxurious Florida mansion owned by her best friends, Barry and his wife, Musselburgh-born Linda.

"Michael Jackson turned out to be absolutely charming," she says with a smile before settling down into a sumptuous sofa in her grand Victorian mansion near Linlithgow. "He was really very nice. His children were there too - each had their own nanny - and they were very well behaved, always asking if they were allowed to do things.

"His little girl, Paris, was about five years old at the time and very artistic, she drew a beautiful butterfly which she said she was giving to her 'Auntie' Linda."

Behind her on the walls of her drawing room hang scores of photographs: there's former model and dancer Sue with her friend Lionel Blair, another of Sir Cliff Richard sandwiched between her and the famous bearded Bee Gee, others of her laughing, arms around Barry's late brother Maurice and his glamorous wife.

As if all that was not enough, Sue suddenly remembers an old address book she recently uncovered from her glamorous life as a top model in 1970s London. Flicking through it, the memories came flooding back: "It was full of addresses for the people we used to hang out with at the time, like the Small Faces, Marmalade, John Lennon, Deep Purple's keyboard player Jon Lord," she recalls.

Sue reels off the names of A-list celebrities she's met like most people might talk about bumping into their next-door neighbours.

So it's perhaps strange then, that the person who has single-handedly turned her life around is a little orphan boy called Nikolai.

Sue's mood dramatically darkens as she remembers his desperately sad face and his tearful pleas for her to remember his name - "He kept shouting: 'I am Nikolai, I am Nikolai', she recalls - as she walked, aching with sorrow for the children she was leaving behind in a bleak, hopeless orphanage in the heart of one of Europe's most popular cities.

She had gone to Prague with her husband Andrew, a director with leading Scottish advertising agency The Union, who was shooting a television advert. Her plans had been to relax in the Czech capital, shopping and taking in the sights - but she never expected what happened next.

"They needed two young babies for the advert," remembers Sue, "and they couldn't take tiny children with them so they asked for local children. They were given dozens of photographs and finally chose two very beautiful, blonde babies.

"When it turned out they came from an orphanage, I was horrified and I didn't want them to use the children. But then we thought that the payment for their appearance in the advert might help the home, so we decided to go and look."

The sights that greeted the mum-of-five have left an indelible imprint on her heart - a shocking alternative to the glamour-filled world of celebrity.

"We saw the two children - as it turned out, they couldn't be used in the advert for legal reasons - and they were the most gorgeous babies. But the nurse just shook her head and said: 'So sad, so sad'. I asked what she meant and she explained that because they were Ukrainian they would never, ever be adopted, that Czechs were not allowed to adopt them because there was no treaty for that between the countries.

"It turned out the babies had been left at the orphanage at birth - that Ukrainian woman would go to Prague and become prostitutes to earn money but fall pregnant. They couldn't look after the children, so they'd deliver them in a room at the orphanage, put them in an incubator, ring a bell and leave. It was heartbreaking."

There were more shocks for Sue as she braced herself to tour the rest of the orphanage: doe-eyed gypsy children who no-one would consider adopting because of the stigma attached to their background, mentally handicapped infants left in their cots without any toys or the faintest human contact and the pathetic call of little Nikolai as he begged the visitors to remember his name.

"I'll never, ever forget him," Sue recalls, "black hair, brown eyes and very handsome. He wanted to follow us around and was very excited to see us.

"But when it came time to go, he suddenly realised we were not taking him with us. He didn't cry - it was worse than that. He just walked over to the stairs, clutched the banister and sank down to the ground, shouting out: 'My name is Nikolai, my name is Nikolai'."

Haunted by what she'd seen, Sue, 59, returned home determined to do all she could to help.

"We actually talked about going back and adopting Nikolai and his little sister," she remembers.

""But at our ages, it just wasn't reasonable.

"I even thought of starting my own charity to raise funds for the orphanages - and I did get some money together - but I wouldn't have known how to start or what to do."

When a family friend mentioned Hope and Homes for Children - a UK-based charity run by a former Army colonel, which campaigns to help orphaned children in some of the world's most desperate situations - Sue decided to put her jet-set lifestyle to the best possible use.

Despite a bout of pneumonia which hospitalised her at the start of the year, next month she will go with the charity on a journey into the depths of Romania to see for herself the pitiful institutions where children from seven years old up to 21 languish in misery, desperate for a family's love.

Then, armed with the memories of what she has seen, she will call on her celebrity contacts to help raise money and awareness in a bid to end their sad plight, and address an international gathering of advertising executives in Costa Rica in a bid to encourage them to help raise £1 million for the charity.

Within the next few months she plans to return to Florida to visit the Gibbs - mingling with the couple's showbiz friends and spreading the word of how a little boy with black hair and big brown eyes changed her life.

"I feel fate drew me there and that this is something that I must do," she explains. "I've been very lucky, I have a wonderful home, a lovely family and a great life - things these poor children will probably never have."

"I know lots of people," she adds with a smile, "and they're going to be hearing from me!"

Hope and Homes for Children works in 13 countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. For more information go to www.hopeandhomes.org.

Dancer who sang in front of the Bee Gees

SUE LINDSAY was just 14 years old when her talent for dance won her a coveted place training with the internationally acclaimed Ballet Rimbaud in London.

Once there, she was quickly spotted in a modelling competition, winning a contract with the Lucy Clayton agency and working on campaigns for fashion house Biba and Charles of the Ritz under her name, Sue Scott.

She was soon joined in London by Musselburgh-born beauty queen Linda Gray, a former Miss Scotland who had arrived to co-host Top of the Pops with Jimmy Saville, only to catch the eye of Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb. The couple eventually married and had five children.

Sue, meanwhile, continued her dance career, working with showman Lionel Blair and eventually helping him set up a nationwide chain of aerobic dance studios.

Back home in Edinburgh, she became a regular face on Scottish Television, dancing on Scotch Corner and Thingummyjig with Scottish stars such as Andy Stewart.

"I lost touch with Linda for a while, but I discovered the Bee Gees were playing in Edinburgh and thought I'd try writing a letter to the person at their record company who dealt with them. As fate would have it, the letter arrived while Barry was there - he read it and immediately passed it to Linda," she remembers.

"She called right away and we spent four hours on the phone, catching up."

Since then, Sue and Linda have remained close friends. Sue is now godmother to the Gibbs' youngest daughter, Alexandra, and visits their Florida mansion regularly. She was there in 2003 when Barry's brother, fellow Bee Gee Maurice, suddenly fell ill and died in a Miami hospital after an emergency operation.

The Gibbs have also been house guests at Glenavon House, by Linlithgow - most recently when Linda and her family gathered to mourn the death of her mother, May.

Sue had the intimidating task of performing a moving rendition of Panis Angelicus at the funeral - singing in front of one of the world's most famous singers. It was a task she would be asked to repeat at an engagement party for one of the Gibbs' four sons.

She has also been on the receiving end of a private performance from the Stayin' Alive songsmith. Barry serenaded her after turning up unexpectedly at her 50th birthday in an Edinburgh restaurant dressed as a waiter.