'Bonnie Tyler was my sister - Christmas will never be the same'

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Four months after Bonnie Tyler's death, her surviving brother Paul shares heartbreaking memories of her lavish Christmas parties and the star's final days

Christmas Day meant a bumper celebration for Bonnie Tyler, who would invite hundreds of people to celebrate with her. Still raw with grief, four months after his sister’s death on July 8, aged 75, her only surviving sibling, Paul Hopkins, 64, says: “Christmas will never be the same again, and I don’t know what we will do this year. I just can’t believe she’s gone. A major part of our family has gone. She meant everything to us and to many people around the world. It’s a massive blow.”

The Total Eclipse of the Heart legend’s love of the festive season has been honoured this week, with the posthumous release of her first Christmas single, Love Light and Peace, at the end of which she can be heard saying: “Merry Christmas all, and to all goodnight.”

.It’s been an emotional experience for Paul, who says: “It’s heart-wrenching. I can’t hold back the tears. It’s so special and I’d love it to be a hit for her. It’s been four months since we lost her and it’s still very raw.”

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Bonnie, who had homes in Mumbles, on Wales’ Gower Peninsula and in Portugal, where she died two months after emergency surgery for a perforated intestine, was the fourth of five sisters and had two brothers.

All have died except for Paul, who calls the star Gaynor, rather than Bonnie Tyler - the stage name she assumed in 1975, the year before her first hit single, Lost in France. He says: “She was Gaynor to us but she was Bonnie Tyler to the rest of the World. She’d have gone nuts if I’d called her Bonnie. She used to call me her baby brother, even when I reached my 60s.”

Recalling her final few months, he continues: “Gaynor wasn’t totally well before she went to Portugal [in the spring], but she wanted to go.

Paul has far happier memories of his sister’s extravagant Christmas dos…

“We’d…

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