The Unsolved Mystery of Madonna's Hat

The news this morning that Michael Jackson's glove sold for $350,000 makes me want to cry. No, no, not because of Michael - sorry as I was to hear of his untimely passing - but for me! Years ago, it must have been 1991 - at the peak of my Madonna phase - a friend of an Italian friend who was living with me at the time, moved to London and I put him up at mine for a few weeks until he found a job and settled in. I can't even remember his name, or what he looked like, but I do remember that his claim to fame was that he had picked up the hat Madonna had thrown during the Turin Who's That Girl gig. (Which was released on video then as Ciao Italia - see Madonna throw the hat at end of this clip http://www.youtube.com/user/xXazdesertboyXx#p/u/30/eBuPt88a7KY)

A few weeks later, he returned to Italy to pick up the rest stuff, including the hat, which he very sweetly gave to me as a gift for putting him up! As you can imagine, for years, the hat was like a piece of the Turin Shroud to me. Then, when I moved to London in 2001, I left it at my mother's house! Big mistake.

The hat has now disappeared, and nobody seems to know where it ended. I suspect that during one of the recent moves, my mum - never a big fan of Madonna, who she considers a bit of a floozy - must have thrown it out with the rest of the 'junk', as she once did with years worth of The Face, i-D and Blitz. To think that someday that hat could be worth lots of money breaks my heart . Not that I would have ever dreamt of getting rid of it, of course ....