Today's edition of De Telegraaf, Holland's most-read newspaper, features an article about Marga Scheide and her partner, Michiel Gunning, in its "Privé" (entertainment news) section.
The former Luv' singer reveals sad news: after four years of fighting colon and lung cancer, Michiel was told last week that doctors could no longer do anything for him.
We wish Michiel and Marga a lot of courage.
"We have been back from Ibiza for a few weeks. I'm not well. But I think it's worst for Marga. The knowledge that she will have to lose a man for the second time is terrible. But that is the reality. Because my right lung no longer works at all and the left only for thirty per cent. After an emotional conversation this morning, we decided to make it known to the world so that no vague stories will circulate," Michiel says.
Michiel hopes to see his third grandchild in December. "My daughter Robin and her fiancé Dennis are expecting their first child. My other daughter Renée and her husband Tigon already have two children: Willem and Mabel. But if I end up lying on a bed with an oxygen mask due to my deteriorating lung with a nurse by my side and all kinds of tubes in my body, it may be over for me. I certainly don't want to experience it," he explains.
When asked if they deliberately concealed Michiel's disease from the outside world for a long time, Marga answers: "We did indeed. If you start shouting that from the rooftops, people will keep calling you. Then you hang on the phone until late at night because people naturally want to be informed. Michiel has not been well for a long time. It started with colon cancer. At one point in December 2018, he was told he was supposedly 'clean'. But we also understood that in certain cases, malignant cells can still settle in other organs. The intestines were fine, but his lungs turned out to be affected. That has only gotten worse over the past four years. The fact that he has persevered for so long may also have to do with the fact that he took the medical messages seriously but did not let them get through. I listened with a completely different ear to the doctors at the AVL, the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital. So I knew for a long time that it could sometimes go wrong. Fortunately, Michiel took a more positive view of all this. Until now!"
History repeats itself as Marga's former partner, the Dutch record producer Jacques Zwart, passed away on April 1st, 2003. "My man Jacques Zwart died twenty years ago of a cardiac arrest. We had been very happy together for two decades. Two years after his passing, I met Michiel at Café 't Bonte Paard in Laren. He knew who I was, but I didn't know who he was at first," Marga says. Her Luv' colleague and friend José Hoebee turned out to be better informed about Michiel's past. "When I introduced him during a performance at the Efteling attraction park, José immediately recognized him and said to him: "Hello David!" In the 1980s, Michiel played the role of David in a photonovel published in the teen magazine Popfoto. I knew this publication as Luv' often appeared in it. Michiel and I have had such a great time together for eighteen years, but now we have to face this tragedy. How is it possible that twice in my life, I was lucky enough to experience a great love story and then both of them are taken away from me at some point?" Marga asserts.
Click here to read an article about Michiel Gunning's artistic past in the 1970s and 1980s.
Agnetha Fältskog (of ABBA) and Michiel Gunning (aka David) - article published in Popfoto in June 1979
Source: De Telegraaf/Privé, Shownieuws, Nouveau