Goring-on-Thames doesn’t have much in common with LA. If this were California there would be bus tours and kerchinging souvenir shops and shiny stars in the pavement. As it is, the reserved Oxfordshire village where Oscar Wilde and Pete Townshend once lived has one solitary blue plaque, on the old red-brick sorting office by the bridge. It commemorates Samuel E Saunders, the “pioneer of air and marine craft” who founded the company that made Malcolm Campbell’s record-breaking 1937 speedboat, Blue Bird. There is also a small wooden heart tied to a footbridge with views of a handsome 16th-century cottage. It reads, “Love George!! Thanks for inspir[ing] me and my sexuality.” Because what Goring does have in common with LA is George Michael, the singer-songwriter who had houses in both towns. Residents don’t like to make a big deal about it but this is the home of Fastlove as well as fast boats
Fans, on the other hand, do. George Michael bought Mill Cottage in 2001 and died there on Christmas Day, 2016, aged 53. When he died, fans petitioned in vain for the cottage to be turned into a memorial. Instead they congregate in the village on his birthday each June, booking tribute acts to play pubs and the village hall. They gather outside Mill Cottage at Christmas, playing Last Christmas on their phones. For a closer look they could dig out the 2004 episode of Oprah Winfrey’s show where George gives a tour of his home, pointing out the next-door church, the original fireplace, the Aga, the pool house. Now, though, fans don’t have to rely on grainy 20-year-old footage — they can just rent that pool house via Airbnb.
Do I want to stay there? Are Club Tropicana drinks free?! I’m not one of the Lovelies — the megafans, like Gaga’s Little Monsters or Taylor’s Swifties. But I love the guy’s music, I love all the tales of his quiet philanthropy that have emerged since his death and I love a pool. So I book a night, but I’m not planning on going solo. My friend Becky is Lovely-adjacent — one of her favourite Christmas presents is the lifesize cardboard cutout of George, mid-song in suit and shades, that her brother-in-law gave her. He folds neatly (George, not the brother-in-law) so we pack him up along with our two sisters and head Goringwards.
The pool house is on an island in the grounds of Mill Cottage and access is through the code-locked garden gate and over a bridge. Our arrival is slightly complicated because the driveway is temporarily out of action, so we have to deposit our bags (and George), find a car park and return on foot through the hushed village — yes, a carless whisper.
I can’t tell you the name of Mill Cottage’s owner because she and her family are as fond of privacy as George was and Goring remains, but I can tell you that she’s a lovely host (an Airbnb Guest Favourite, no less) who has been rather taken aback by the attention. They bought the £3.8 million property in 2020 when they moved back from Hong Kong. “When the estate agent told us it was George Michael’s home it didn’t mean much,” she says. “I had heard of him, but not growing up in the UK, I massively underestimated his significance. The children were just happy to have a garden. But the longer I’ve lived here and after meeting so many of his wonderful fans I now understand why he is held in such high regard.”
The Airbnb listing doesn’t mention George Michael — “I feel it’s a bit distasteful” — but the fans have found it and the owner generously shows people round the garden and its bits of Georgeabilia. We get the tour too: there’s the bush topiaried into a slightly unconvincing treble clef shape. Becky is taken by the sundial, a 40th-birthday gift to George from his partner at the time, Kenny Goss, that’s engraved with directions to places they had homes: St Tropez, Dallas, Hampstead. I like the stone pergola from Elton John that now stands at the edge of the island’s croquet lawn, apparently moved out of sight when the two fell out.
We turn a different corner and there is the pool house, discreetly (of course) screened from the cottage and the Thames Path by hedges — and from the neighbours by tall trees. In the Oprah footage, George says that the next-door baroness planted them, fearing he’d be having nonstop celeb parties (in fact the only teeny hint of non-vanilla larks are the three flip-down seats in the pool house shower room). The green-tiled pool is heated, and furnished as you’d hope with unicorn and flamingo inflatables. The pool house, out of river-floods’ way up some steps, is glass-fronted; under the exposed beams there’s a huge working fireplace, a basket of pool towels and a rock’n’roll TV. The en suite bedroom has blackout blinds; those sleeping on the living-room sofa bed need to appreciate natural light or bring eye masks. Glassware is mismatched and the armchairs are a bit care-home upright, but there are loads of books and games, and a welcome hamper including Mill Cottage apple juice and homemade marmalade.
It’s a good thing we’ve done the fan thing and brought our own Choose Life T-shirts, pink Gratien & Meyer, ie G&M fizz, and cardboard George (he’s fun, but makes me jump in the morning when I catch bleary sight of him standing behind the sofa) — because the rest of the place is in un-George-related good taste. (The owner says they “do have many guests who are not George fans” — typically visiting from London to get out on the river or hike the Ridgeway or Thames Path.) The best I can find are a deck of George cards in a “Playing for Time” box and a roll of clingfilm I’ve decided should be called Wham! wrap.
With its half-timbered houses and hanging baskets, Goring plays it similarly cool. By 4.30pm on a Saturday most places are closed so we window-shop: a George postcard and a designer-stubble-era mug on display at the Inspiration gift shop are almost the full extent of the merch, though Reeds art gallery has a few collagey portraits on sale. We suspect their main customer is the Miller of Mansfield pub, where we spot a few later on, as well as Pub Tropicana T-shirts for a tenner, and a framed note at the worst table in the house claiming this spot was where George “sat, drank and dined”.
He must have got there earlier than we do; by 8.45pm the kitchen has closed so we go outside in the moonshine, back to the pool house to warm up the M&S moussaka we’ve brought. We think George would have approved, and not just because of his Greek-Cypriot roots. In a 2017 interview Goss told The Sun that of all their homes, he and George had been happiest in Goring, where they’d chill out with TV and ready meals — “he thought Marks & Spencer was ‘it’”.
So we do have a rock-star break — a whole night’s holiday — if not a terribly raucous one. Trying not to wake anyone up before I go go, I even sneak out early for a run south along the Thames Path, through trees and meadows, past other one-percenter homes, and under Brunel’s railway bridge to Ferry Cottage, where Oscar Wilde stayed with Lord Alfred Douglas. The river is an uninviting post-rain shade of brown so I’m even happier that the pool is waiting. Back at base I kick off my trainers and jump in — a leap of Faith. As for Becky, does she enjoy our stay? It’s everything she wants.
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