Perhaps more famous for being in the news than for anything he actually did creatively, David Gest made a career of being in the right place, or the wrong place, as the case might be, and he was the kind of celebrity only the 21st century could conceptualize. Born in Los Angeles, California, Gest grew up in Southern California, where one of his best friends was Tito Jackson of the famed Jackson family, a connection and friendship that Gest steadily maintained. Gest first really caught the public's attention when he married Liza Minnelli on March 16, 2002, a marriage that generated a lot of tabloid press as well as a lawsuit or two before dissolving a year and a half later. Gest next turned up on the U.K. reality series I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! during the 2006 season of the show and he had his own reality series, This Is David Gest, a year later in 2007. Never one to stand still, Gest also released his autobiography, Simply the Gest, that same year. In 2008 he starred and toured in his own autobiographical musical, David Gest Is Nuts...My Life as a Musical. Also in 2008, Gest began working with pop icon Michael Jackson on a recording project that involved turning the poems of Robert Burns into contemporary show tunes. David Gest died in London in April 2016 at the age of 62. ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi