The singer's child will grow up in the most extraordinary crucible of wealth, privilege and kitsch, says Judith Woods.
Please don’t let the scurrilous rumours be true that Sir Elton John’s new son was induced on December 25, in order to be The Ultimate Christmas Present, I just couldn’t bear it. I’d rather bury my head in a luxury lambskin footmuff until little Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John arrives in Britain to live happily ever after in his £35,000 nursery. Ladbroke’s is already offering 6/1 that Zachary’s collection of limited-edition Gucci First Sneakers will eclipse Suri Cruise’s $1 million pret-a-porter wardrobe within six months.
At online retailer cafepress.co.uk, Zachary can be kitted out in an “I Love My Daddies” babygro and an “I’m Lucky, I Have Two Dads” bib, which is a fine sentiment, but for the fact one of them happens to be Elton John, arguably the biggest baby in showbusiness.
Let us remember that this hissy-fit-made-flesh once demanded a private jet be repainted before he would board it, and used to insist that lawyers be flown across the Atlantic to meet him, only to refuse to leave his hotel room.
Sir Elton is financially incontinent but...
redeemingly generous and his need for instant gratification is legendary: when he fell in love with a tram in Melbourne, it cost him £10,000 to buy – and £1 million to ship back to his home in Windsor. But we all have to grow up sometime and perhaps, at 63, Sir Elton feels ready to let someone else throw all the toys out of the (Silver Cross) pram.
Both he and David Furnish, his civil partner, are understandably overjoyed by the birth of a baby whose mystery egg-sperm-donor-surrogate-conception continuum, was of such baffling complexity it was probably first scribbled on an envelope by Stephen Hawking.
Furnish, who has been with his high-maintenance inamorato for 17 patient years, may or may not be the father – ditto Sir Elton himself. All identities remain private for now at least, and frankly, as with all human procreation, once the mewling newborn arrives, how it got here becomes academic.
Of greater interest is that even a £290,000 flower habit, the largest private collection of photography in the world, (most of it stored at his home in Atlanta, where he employs a curator), founding and chairing one of the biggest Aids charities, assorted dogs and houses, fame and success simply wasn’t enough. There have been murmurings that Zachary was created on the mother – or father – of all whims, a living, breathing fashion accessory for the notoriously obsessive Sir Elton, but Furnish seems sensible enough to have thought things through.
Humans are hard-wired to procreate. Scientific advances fuel hope and feed aspiration and, as is now abundantly clear, sexual proclivity has little bearing on an individual’s impulse to love and nurture.
The underlying sadness is that Sir Elton and Furnish, whose Aids charity donated £1.4 million to Ukraine last year, attempted to adopt Lev, a 14-month-old HIV-positive boy abandoned in a Ukrainian orphanage. The application was refused on the grounds that Sir Elton, at 62, was too old and his civil partnership with Furnish, not recognised by the authorities – and with a rubber stamp a small boy’s life chances were crushed. There is no culture of adoption in Ukraine, certainly not for children with HIV.
Whether that encounter ignited the desire for a baby of their own is a matter of conjecture. Either way, the couple chose not to pursue adoption and are the proud fathers of a boy who will grow up in the most extraordinary crucible of wealth, privilege and kitsch. There will be A-list godparents, a glitzy christening and a lifetime of giddy excess. No one doubts that Zachary Jackson Levon will be loved, nor that his fathers will spare a thought for his namesake, Lev, left behind in Makeyevka’s orphanage.
After all, if parenthood teaches us anything, it’s that love for a child isn’t about bespoke furnishings or cashmere blankets. It’s a tender trap, an emotion that takes hold of you by soft stealth and quietly and surely strangles you with your own heartstrings, so you can never escape.
