It was just after Christmas 1997, i was feeling pretty low as i was going through a depression because of a baby who suddenly died in August 1997, and the my fling with finn was practically over.
So when Richie came from Birmingham to live in London, so he could try and break the music industry, it was new to me. We were friends, although not tight friends, we saw each other when we could. Like we had jobs to go to and our own personal interests in the music industry.
We usually met in central London, chatted, hugged and kissed. He was a real inspiration to me, he liked aston villa, i liked Arsenal and Everton. So we always had one subject we never bored of. During the summer of 1998, i didn't see him as he had gone to the USA with some lads to release some promo material. He came back at the end of Sept.
Christmas time 1998, he met another singer who had made it into the music charts and he started seeing her. That meant we only met once a month to chat because he was shagging her. In the summer of 1999, he cut of his lovely brown locks, so it was spikey now, because she liked it that way and i guess, he would look good as her other half in the celebrity mags. By the end of August '99, he had made it into the music charts as well, so maybe the hairdo paid off.
During the last four months of 1999, he started getting closer to me again confiding his secrets in me and i did too, especcially my weird love for Malcolm. At Christmas, he told me he was going to propose to her (i was furious, but i guess it was something to get them into the mags). My reaction to my best friend getting engaged?
Kissing Malcolm, getting involved with Malcolm (not sexually) Urgghhh!!!
Anyway Richie continued to be loved up until May, when he got a virus and his fiancee dumped him, and well i was round there with the kleenexes to dry his tears, well thats because i wanted to do! we went to Corfu for a week in July with Spiros giving me lots of advice of Corfu. And in August Richie got to meet his idol, Brian May out of Queen, I took a photo and framed it for him. We continued being close friends and we wrote a lot more songs together and meeting in London.
But as the year drifted into 2001, we started to drift apart. One of the songs we wrote together entered the chart, in the summer of 2001. Then he announced he was going back to live in Birmingham, but promised me we would stay in touch because he still would come back to London for his music career. Plus he said i had Ryan now and i shouldn't get to lonely. Once a year i get the occasional e-mail from him, to which he always replies.
The last i heard was that he was getting married, so 
CONGRATULATIONS RICHIE!! 
(Just a shame, it wasn't me)
