PALIN MITENK BLOG

By Richard Price and Ben Todd

To the neighbours in an exclusive Home Counties enclave they are a familiar pair.

The proud young mother and her little girl, whose first birthday was last month, live in a five-bedroom house worth £1.5million.

With a new four-wheel drive BMW parked outside, there is clearly no shortage of funds.

The reason for this can be found in the toddler's extraordinary name: Snow Robin.

This bright-eyed little girl is the daughter of Robin Gibb, younger of the two surviving Bee Gees.

And her mother is Gibb's former housekeeper, Claire Yang, with whom he had an eight-year affair under the nose of his second wife Dwina.

Throughout that time, Claire lived with Robin and Dwina at their converted medieval monastery in Oxfordshire. Incredibly, the affair between Robin and Claire was sanctioned by Dwina, a bisexual former Druid priestess who has boasted for decades about their 'open' relationship.

Yet even priestesses have her limits, it seems, and earlier this year Claire and Snow Robin were thrown out of the house after Dwina decided her husband had 'gone too far' in impregnating the hired help. At 34, Claire is a quarter of a century younger than Gibb, who will celebrate his 60th birthday three days before Christmas.

Chris Hutchins, who for many years worked as Gibb's personal PR representative, says: 'Robin is a good man. Unusual but fundamentally decent.'

This decency has been displayed in the way he has treated his youngest child (he also has three grown-up children from his two marriages).

After their departure, Claire and Snow Robin were provided with a house five miles away, which Gibb visited regularly in his Jaguar coupe, before moving again to their current rented property.

It is understood that Gibb plays an active role in his daughter's upbringing. 'New life is heaven-sent and a blessing,' he said when asked about Snow Robin earlier this year.

'That's what I can say about children and life in answer to your question.'

Open marriage: Robin Gibb and second wife Dwina Murphy, a bisexual former Druid priestess, have an unconventional relationship

Having seen his first marriage collapse in the late 1970s, Gibb seemed to have found contentment with Dwina. Central to their relationship was their highly-unusual sex life, which centred around the fact that Dwina's preference was to sleep with other women, while Gibb was allowed a free rein sexually with her partners.

Almost as unusual are Gibb's personal habits. 'He's a very odd man, with the worst wig you've ever seen and a very bizarre relationship with food,' adds the friend. 'Robin eats very little. He's very proud of being thin and will fast for days on end.

'He was having this relationship with Claire, which he didn't really try to hide, but when the baby was born all hell broke loose. Dwina was absolutely livid - it was pandemonium. That was taking the open relationship too far.'

Arrangements were made for Claire to give birth in the private Portland Hospital in London.

At some point, however, Dwina is understood to have decided that enough was enough, turning in fury on her errant husband and insisting that his 'second family' were not welcome to live with her any longer.

Robin instructed his representatives to find rented accommodation and hired a nanny to help look after Snow Robin and provide some companionship for Claire.

Nevertheless, it has remained a fraught subject at home, with a former colleague of the Bee Gee saying this week: 'Robin and Dwina have weathered the storm, but things will never be the same again.'

Now, Claire and Snow Robin are on the move again, with their rented home being put back on the market this month. It is unclear where they are going next as the Bee Gee's representatives declined to comment when approached, yet there has even been speculation that the duo might be welcomed back into the family fold in time for Christmas.

Unlikely, perhaps. But in the context of Robin Gibb's bizarre life, stranger things have happened.


source: dailymail.co.uk