Pete Burns's Biography

Pete Burns, who was 46 when he entered Celebrity Big Brother, founded the dance/electro group, Dead or Alive, in 1980.

Dead or Alive achieved international fame in 1985 with the classic 'You Spin Me Around' (Like A Record).

The hit was the first UK Number 1 for Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

Right after Celebrity Big Brother, a re-release of You Spin Me Around entered the charts at number five.

Before Dead or Alive, Pete Burns had been with The Mystery Girls and then Nightmares in Wax.

Pete Burns achieved a large following internationally in the late 1980s, in particular, in Japan.

In Celebrity Big Brother, Pete Burns said that in 1989 he went on a long journey and found himself.

In April 2003, Pete Burns told the Guardian: "I still have a career, and I don't really do reality."

The Guardian piece has an amazing potted accounted of Pete Burns's family history:

"At the start of the second world war, his mother, a glamorous, Jewish-German aristocrat, sometime member of the Russian secret police with a false passport, was forced into hiding in cellars, eating candles to fill her stomach up. But she always kept her mink coat. And her hairdresser. She fled Hitler's Holocaust "by marrying the first British soldier who came along" (Dad, Mr Burns, a Scotsman). Pete spoke German until aged five, local kids surrounding the house "shouting 'Heil Hitler!' for days outside the door." He'd turn up to primary school "wearing a red Indian headdress. And I would not remove it. I was just...different."

Burns told the Guardian in the same piece with regard to his wife of 20 years, Lynne: "I really love her and she loves me ..."

However, they are now separated and Pete has a boyfriend, Michael Simpson. In February 2006, Pete and Michael got engaged and gave each other skull-style engagement rings.

Pete Burns is into Vivienne Westwood, he told Top of the Pops:

"There's isn't anyone that influences my image changes, but I do really like Vivienne Westwood designs. She's a true designer and every event that's happened in my life I've been wearing Vivienne's clothes. As early as 1976, I got the sack from my first job as a hairdresser because I was wearing Vivienne Westwood's clothes."

Since his early 20s, Pete Burns has been unhappy with his face. Burns has undergone extensive cosmetic surgery.

In the Big Brother house he railed against the concept of his looking or dressing like a woman pointing out to Chantelle and others that women wore trousers and it didn't make them cross-dressers.

As Pete himself pointed out it is curious given his attitude towards his face that in his youth he got tattoos to 'masculinise my appearance'.

Pete Burns came fifth in Celebrity Big Brother 2006.

In March 2006, The Daily Record reported that Pete Burns had checked into a mental health unit.

The paper quoted a spokesperson as saying that Pete Burns was suffering "sleep deprivation and exhaustion".

According to the article, Burns checked into the St Charles Mental Health Unit after staying at the exclusive Hempel Hotel in West London, but he failed to pay his bill.

Living TV created a series following Pete Burns after he was released from prison, where he was sentenced for assaulting his partner, Michael.

Pete Burns has written an autobiography entitled Freak Unique.

In January 2007, the Manchester Evening News reported that Pete Burns was suing his plastic surgeon, Dr Maurizio Viel, for making him look `physically repulsive'.

Over two years later, The Mail reported that Pete Burns had won an out-of-court settlement of £450,000 after launching a legal case against his plastic surgeon for 'ruining his career and life'.

In 2007, Pete Burns was one of the celebrity presenters of Big Brother's Big Mouth.

He also featured in Living TV's series, Pete Burns' PA.

On 20 October 2008, the BBC reported that Pete Burns was set to receive damages for lip injections.

The level of the damages Pete Burns receives from suing Dr Maurizio Viel, who carried out the procedures between 2000 and 2004, will be determined at a hearing in March 2009.

On 16 March 2009, The Mail reported that Pete Burns collapsed and was rushed to hospital, where he had emergency surgery on his kidneys.

On 23 October 2016, Pete Burns died, aged 57, after suffering a cardiac arrest.