The last time that Anthony Ciccone saw his sister Madonna, she was stepping out of a luxury limousine, shattering the quiet of a peaceful American Midwest town as flashing camera bulbs and screaming fans greeted the arrival of one of the world’s most famous women.
Madonna was the star attraction at a film festival three years ago, while Anthony was just another face in the crowd. Having watched his multi-millionairess sister stroll into the cinema, he staggered off for another night of hard drinking with the town’s vagrants.
Only two years separate Anthony and Madonna Ciccone in age, but they might as well be two centuries, given the wildly diverging trajectories their lives have taken.
While she went from their modest family roots in Detroit to find mega-stardom and a fortune that affords her multi-million-pound homes across the globe, it was revealed this week that her big brother sleeps rough under a bridge in a small town in Michigan.
While the Material Girl owns six expensive houses in London alone, just about everything Anthony owns can be fitted into the plastic shopping bag he carries around with him.
Homeless for the past 18 months since he lost his job at his father’s wine-making business, Anthony spends his nights dossing on the cold concrete of a grubby footpath under Traverse City’s Union Street road bridge, sharing damp, threadbare blankets with his companion, a fellow alcoholic named Michael Champ.
Anthony, 55, could not look less like his gym and yoga-toned sister. A white-bearded bear of a man, his ruddy complexion, four layers of stained and dirty clothes and pungent smell are testament to his life on the streets.
He smokes so many roll-up cigarettes that not only his fingers but also his moustache are stained yellow by nicotine.
With Anthony accusing Madonna and other family members of ‘washing their hands’ of him, the startling contrast between his life and his sister’s has inevitably raised the question: how could a woman with a $650 million fortune leave her brother in such desperate straits?
Speaking publicly for the first time this week about his troubled past and difficult relationship with his famous sister, Anthony makes it clear the story is not a simple one — as anyone who has ever dealt with an addicted loved one will probably know. It is clear that Madonna knows about his plight, and that she has repeatedly offered to help by paying for him to go into rehab.
His father has offered to give him his job back if he gets professional help. But ask Anthony whether his sister and their 80-year-old father, Tony, have helped him and he is immediately riled.
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