The first time I met Ike Turner was in 1996, when he was visiting England with his new bride, a spirited 32-year-old blonde named Jeanette. Ike was 64. They had booked into their hotel as "Mr and Mrs Honeymoon".
It was Turner’s 12th or 13th matrimonial adventure - he claimed to have first got married at 14 - although he was somewhat hazy on the exact number. But there was only one marriage that anyone ever wanted to talk about - and that, he claimed, wasn’t even legal. "Hell, I was still married to some other woman. Didn’t get divorced from her til ’74."
It was Ike Turner’s great good fortune to have been married to Tina, but it became his curse. Annie Mae Bullock, to give her her proper name,...