MY LOCKERBIE ESCAPE..LYDON

PUNK legend Johnny Rotten has told for the first time how he could have died in the tragic Lockerbie air disaster.

Rotten was booked on to the fateful Pan AM flight 103 with wife Nora but missed it...because she took too long packing.

Last night Sex Pistols frontman Johnny said: "Nora and I should have been dead.

"We only missed the flight because Nora hadn't packed in time. We had a big row

and then took the next flight out.

"The minute we realised what had happened, we just looked at each other and almost collapsed."

Flight 103 from Heathrow to New York fell from the sky over Lockerbie in December 1988 when a Libyan bomb exploded in the hold.

All 259 passengers and crew on board and 11 people on the ground died in one of the worst terrorist atrocities in history.

Now Johnny has revealed that the haunting memory of his and Nora's near-miss was the reason for his sudden walk-out from I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

Johnny, who goes by his real name Lydon, said: "From Lockerbie on, when my wife takes a flight I need to know she has arrived safely.

"It's my response to the knowledge that our bloody argument and those bags saved our lives that night. So, on the programme, I was raging because I knew Nora was flying out to Australia - but nobody would tell me whether or not she had arrived.

"That is the woman I love and I thought that it was ****ing appalling.

"I was hearing that other people in the jungle were talking to friends and loved ones and Kerry McFadden spoke to her kids. I don't know why nobody would tell me.

"This was my wife, who matters more to me even than my own life, and I wasn't even told she had landed. That was the final straw."

With his trademark manic grin and a parting through his peroxide hair the width of the M25, Johnny jabbed his finger to make the point: "I have never, ever backed down from anything."

Just in case there was any doubt, he added: "I've taken on the Royal Family, the Establishment and Jordan. And no one has ever got the better of me."

Johnny told me how the one thing that really scares him is the thought that anything should ever happen to Nora, the love of his life.

For a quarter of a century, Lydon has kept silent about his marriage to German-born Nora, 61, who is 13 years older than him.

"This is true love," he said. "It isn't the idiocy you read in Hello! magazine who, incidentally, have offered us money for the Johnny and Nora story."

He has been a father figure to Nora's grandsons, twins Pablo and Pedro, both 21, and eight-year-old Wilton.

The twins have lived with Lydon, who grew up in Finsbury Park, North London, and Nora since they were 15.

The unlikely grandad says he was a regular at school Parent Teachers' Association meetings. "I've done PTAs for 20 years and have you ever heard a complaint? My grandchildren have saved me and I've saved them. You get such a buzz out of it.

"My grandsons are as black as the ace of spades and I am as white as the driven snow, no problem at all."

The scene of the interview is the back patio of Creative Sushi in Santa Monica.

Washing down his lunch with plenty of saki, Johnny says: "Sushi, like revenge, is a dish best served cold."

California has been home for the singer for almost two decades - he owns properties in Marina Del Ray, Malibu and London. Lydon said he agreed to go on I'm A Celebrity because he loves nature and was intrigued by the experience. But he's been left with a bitter taste. At a party thrown by winner Kerry McFadden's Westlife star husband Bryan, fellow contestant Neil "Razor" Ruddock was reported to have thrown out Lydon and his best friend and "super-manager" John Rambo for starting a rumpus that upset the guests.

"The whole story was false. Razor did nothing of the sort. He couldn't cut custard. I've known Rambo since I was 11 and he wouldn't let anyone push him around and neither would I.

"I have never started a fight in my life. Passive resistance is my nature. But I am not someone to take it from a fat sad sack like him.

"He never touched us and I have been trying to get him to tell the truth but he has done nothing to put it right.

"Razor has to stand up and be a man. They even said Nora praised him for sorting us out. What rubbish! How dare he lie?"

Rambo, furious that Ruddock has sullied his hard man reputation, has told Razor: "I'll take him on, any place, any time, anywhere.

"For charity, in the ring or on the cobbles, gloves on or gloves off, unless he retracts that story and tells the truth."

And with that, our four-hour lunch is over.

Copyright 2004 MGN LTD
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