John Farnham claims ex-manager Darryl Sambell ‘drugged’ him for years in bombshell memoir

John Farnham has claimed in his new memoir that his former manager Darryl Sambell secretly drugged him while he was a young performer coming up in the music industry.

The 75-year-old wrote that Sambell, who died in 2001, would put substances in his coffee back when he managed the You’re The Voice singer’s music career during the late 1960s and into the ‘70s.

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“He drugged me for years and I had no f****** idea,” he wrote in his memoir The Voice Inside, the Daily Mail reported.

Farnham wrote that he first became aware of Sambell’s behaviour when he finished a cup of coffee and found a half-dissolved pill at the bottom.

When he confronted Sambell, Farnham said his manager told him that it was simply “something to help you stay awake”.

John Farnham performs. Credit: Matt Jelonek/WireImage

He wrote that Sambell “controlled where and when I worked, what I sang, what I wore, what I ate.

“He isolated me from friends and family, he tried to keep me away from (my wife) Jill, he drugged me, and he made me believe that all my success, everything I had, was because of him.

“I feel so ashamed of myself for not realising what Darryl was up to or speaking up more often to put him back in his place.

“I didn’t question any of it, I just went along as if nothing was off-key. I still don’t know why I didn’t react more.

“I put it down to being young, under stress, tired and feeling unsure and insecure about my own instincts.”

Darryl Sambell and John Farnham. Credit: Supplied

Sambell was his manager until 1976 when they cut professional ties after a decade.

He went on to write that Sambell, who was openly gay, had made “aggressively sexual” advances towards him.

“He would ‘try it on’ and I would say, ‘Darryl, no. Just leave me alone’, or, ‘It’s not going to happen’,” he wrote.

“Many years have passed since then and, up until now, I’ve found it very hard to unpick what happened to me.

“But now that I’ve confronted it, I look back on that time with sorrow. I’m annoyed at myself for being so gullible and trusting.”