He had arranged to rent a villa in Sicily and invite his extended family – his two daughters, Emma and Lucy, his five grandchildren, and his ex-wife Gabrielle, with whom he has remained friendly since their divorce in 1975, and her two sons from a previous relationship. There’s nothing else I would want to do.’ Obviously, quitting did cross my mind but I thought, no, I still love what I’ve been doing all my life. He got lots of tempting offers to return to performing, but was enjoying his stress-free life too much to get back on stage – ‘where I’d always pushed myself to the limit, and look what good it had done me. I went sailing and fishing every day and discovered the joys of gardening.’Ĭurtain call: The cast wave to the audience on the opening night of The Wizard of OzĪfter four years of ill health, Crawford was fit to work again. Then I changed my entire regime, putting myself on a diet of healthy food and taking each day at a time, rather than worrying about the future. ‘For two years, I didn’t feel well at all. Nothing seemed to cure him, so he prescribed himself constant sunshine and moved to New Zealand, living in a small house near Auckland. I look back on it now and realise that creating that suit was one of the worst ideas I ever had.’ Ironically, I’d helped design that rubber costume, and it had been like stepping into a sauna for three hours every night. 'My immune system had broken down and this led to ME. With no nutrients to sustain me, I had become vulnerable to a virus. 'I’d been losing too many nutrients from my body, and the water I’d been swigging wasn’t enough to replace them.

It had made me sweat so much that I had become dangerously dehydrated.

'I was told by the doctors that it was all down to the Count Fosco suit. I went for all sorts of brain and body scans until ME was finally diagnosed. ‘What I thought had been flu turned into a physical meltdown. Follow the Yelloe Brick Road: Michael with his co-star Danielle Hope who plays Dorothy

Good curtain call song for wizard of oz