The Sunday Times Magazine • 15be renowned for its cuisine, but Warne opted for an
all-Australian snack — Vegemite on toast. “Jeez, you
can’t beat Vegemite with some butter, always great
wherever you are in the world,” Warne said. After the
cricketer’s death, Hall posted a picture of the Vegemite
pot on Instagram, with the infinity pool behind it.
Shortly after they’d eaten, Hall left the villa. “Ever
the caring father, as I was leaving [Warne] headed up
to his bedroom to call his kids,” he wrote.
Whatever distractions there may be elsewhere on
Samui, Samujana is an easy place to choose not to
leave — with its expansive open living areas, bars,
barbecues and private infinity pools. Each villa has its
own butler-manager who can arrange everything from
massages to fire dancers and personal trainers. Many
of the villas are privately owned and used as residences
or are managed by Samujana and rented and marketed
as luxury getaways. In 2017 the actor Idris Elba stayed
there while training to be a professional kick-boxer.
At $2,000 per person per night, the five-bedroom
Villa One is one of the prime properties, featuring
a private screening room, gym and games room for
guests — an opulent hillside retreat, away from prying
eyes. It was familiar terrain to Warne and his friends:
the close-knit party were regular visitors, thanks to
Gaz Edwards’s association with it.
Warne ventured out of the villa complex just once that
day, driving with Edwards to a local tailor’s, Brioni, where
he had stocked up on a previous trip. Parsuram Panday,
44, has run Brioni since 2004. Known to all as Mr Ram,
the grandson of a British Gurkha soldier, he is an avid
cricket fan. The Sunday Times finds him sitting in an
armchair in the middle of his pink and blue shop, beside
an alleyway that leads to the beach. It is another quiet day
for the tailor, who relied heavily on tourist traffic until
the pandemic. Some visitors are now returning to Samui,
but numbers remain a fraction of pre-Covid days.
Ram recalls how Warne and a friend first stumbled
on his store by chance in 2019. The two men had visited
the bank next door to withdraw money when it started
to rain. As they waited for the weather to clear, Warne
looked into the tailor’s window and stepped inside.
“I thought, ‘That’s Shane Warne,’ ” Ram says. “He was
very friendly and he started to check out some material.
When he asked me if I could make him ten shirts,
I thought he was joking at first.” Warne also ordered
suits on that trip. “I saw him wearing one of them later
at some event on television in Australia,” Ram says.
“I thought, ‘That’s Shane Warne wearing one of my
suits.’ I was pleased about that.”
Warne was impressed enough to return last month.
“I had a call from Samujana that a guest would be
coming, but I had no idea who it was,” Ram says. That
Friday lunchtime, Warne strode back in with a broad
smile on his face. “He was laughing and joking and said,
‘Hey, Mr Ram, long time no see.’ He gave some friendly
play punches to my belly. He was in great form, really
buzzing. He said he was excited to be back on the island.”
Warne placed an order worth about £850 for five
blazers, ten pairs of trousers, six pairs of shorts and five
shirts. Ram arranged to visit Samujana the following
day for the fitting, but the next morning he saw online
news reports that Warne had died. He was stunned.
“My first reaction was to think they’d got it wrong.
How could he be dead? It made no sense. He was
completely fine that day. He stepped outside to smoke,
but a lot of people smoke, right?”
A CCTV image shows Warne walking back into the
villa after his visit to Ram’s shop wearing a dark baseballcap, holding several shirts from his visit to Brioni.
“Look at him,” the tailor says. “I’d just seen him. I still
can’t believe he was dead a few hours later. They said
it was a heart attack, but I still find that very difficult to
believe. It doesn’t seem right to me — it’s very strange.”
But there were other images that stirred speculation
over Warne’s death. The mood turned febrile with
the release of the villa CCTV images showing four
masseuses — two visiting Warne and two attending to
one of his friends. Warne had a “four hands” massage
from two of the women. According to the time stamps,
they arrived at 1.53pm and left at 2.58pm, strolling out
calmly, nothing evidently amiss.
It is tough to track down the women, who were the
last people known to have seen Warne alive. At parlours
near Samujana, on the road between the villas and
Ram’s tailor shop, therapists speculated that the
women may have been advised to lay low. “Maybe they
PHILIP SHERWELL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, THAI POLICE were told to keep quiet because of all the attention,”
“HE GAVE
SOME PLAY
PUNCHES TO
MY BELLY.
HE WAS IN
GREAT FORM,
REALLY
BUZZING”
Right, from top:
a police photo of
Warne’s bedroom,
where friends tried
to revive him; CCTV
footage of Warne
returning to the villa
after buying shirts
on the day he died;
four masseuses
leave the villa after
treating Warne
and another guest.
Below: local tailor
Parsuram Panday➤