I asked Bonnie Tyler for an autograph at 15 - then spent Christmas with her for 30 years

ByCatriona Aitken

BBC Wales

A close friend of Bonnie Tyler has spoken about how he knocked on her door to ask for an autograph when he was 15 years old, and ended up spending Christmas Day with her for nearly 30 years.

Rob Marshall, from Mumbles, Swansea, recalled how he saw Tyler perform on children's TV series Swap Shop when he was a teenager, bought her album on cassette and took it round to her house to ask her to sign it.

The pair kept in contact and a few years later she invited him to her annual festive soirée at her home - which he went on to attend for 29 years.

"It was magical," Marshall recalled. "It was an open house... by the end, there were probably 250 people there. It really felt special."

In a statement on Bonnie Tyler's website on Thursday morning, her family confirmed she had died on Wednesday in Portugal following ongoing illness.

The Skewen-born star who lived in Mumbles is survived by her husband of more than 50 years, Robert Sullivan.

The Total Eclipse of the Heart singer was born Gaynor Hopkins and, though Bonnie Tyler was her stage name, she remained Gaynor to close friends and family.

Reminiscing about their first meeting, Marshall told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast: "I just knocked on the door. Got the wrong house, first of all, and just went to a modest, three-bedroom detached house which was hers at the time.

"We started talking... I'm a classical musician so we were talking about that. She just had so much time for people, in general."

The 55-year-old continued: "I think the second time I went round, for an autograph for a single or something, it was all 'come in, stick the kettle on and we'll have a cup of tea'.

"She used to come and watch me in school concerts and then later professional concerts as well."

Marshall said that, while he was studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music in Cardiff, Tyler was singing in St David's Hall.

"So I rocked up there, it was a St David's Day concert, and a security person said 'yeah, alright, whatever'. So I left a note and popped back later and he said 'they're in International Hotel and they say come down for tea'.

"I took a college friend with me and everyone was gobsmacked [that I] knew Bonnie Tyler. "

He said the invite to Christmas occurred when he bumped into her in the pub one Christmas Eve, when he was about 20.

He went on to attend her annual Christmas Day get-togethers for the next 29 years, until the last one she held, with husband Robert Sullivan, in 2019.

In later years, after Marshall's mum died, his dad would also go along with him.

He described "champagne flowing all day" and plentiful buffets, as well as meeting a "host of famous people" including Catherine Zeta Jones and Sir Gareth Edwards.

Marshall, a concert pianist, said he and Tyler would "do our little turn" every year, playing carols as well as some of her biggest hits including Total Eclipse of the Heart and Holding Out For a Hero.

On one occasion, they sang "all 10 minutes of Bat Out Of Hell" with singer Lorraine Crosby, known for being the female vocalist on Meat Loaf's 1993 hit single I'd Do Anything for Love.

The song that started it all for Marshall, when it was featured on Swap Shop, was If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man) - written by four times Grammy-nominated songwriter Desmond Child.

Child, who wrote and produced many songs for Tyler - as well as some of the biggest hits for Bon Jovi, Aerosmith and Cher - said he learned of her death from his husband.

"Honestly, I fell apart," he said. "We were very close."

He continued: "Everything about her was majestic, yet humble at the same time, and I'm just so lucky that I got to work with her.

"She would cackle, she would laugh. She had endless amounts of energy and she loved everybody, she was sweet to everybody."

He said "the beauty of her" was that, though "her voice is an international, global treasure", she was "happy singing in a pub".

Marshall agreed Tyler was "not fussy" about where and when she sang, getting up on stage with him when she attended a gig of a friend's band, and always being game for some karaoke.

"There were two types of people, I think, who knew her and her husband. There were people who knew Bonnie and Robert, and people who knew Bobby and Gaynor. And I don't think I've ever called her Bonnie in my life - Gaynor and Love, I think that was it.

"I have got so many happy memories, we will all miss her. Walking around Mumbles yesterday, it was almost like there's a mist over the place."

He said he planned to light a candle in the local church in her memory.

"[She was] a one-off, far more talented than anybody will ever know, one of the most emotional singers I've ever heard, normal, a good drinker. There's so many things.

"She was just lovely... beautiful inside and out."