Kim McLagan


Kim McLagan was a British model during the 1960s. She was married to The Who's Keith Moon from 1966 to 1975, and to The Small Faces and Faces' Ian McLagan from 1978 to her death.

Early life

Kerrigan, known as "Patsy" during her youth, was born in Leicester, but moved to Malaya at the age of three months when her father, Bill, started work managing a rubber and coconut plantation. She recalled spending most of her childhood being looked after by her nanny, and consequently learned to speak Malay at the same time as English. At the age of seven, she briefly spent time in England before living in Uganda and Tanganyika, both for two years each. By this time, her parents were concerned about her education, so she was enrolled in an Irish Catholic convent school in Bray, Wicklow. She had an unhappy experience there and attempted to run away on several occasions, before settling in Bournemouth at the end of 1963.
After starting work as a hairdresser, Kerrigan met Marie Fraser, who ran a modelling agency and school known as the Dawn Academy. At Fraser's urging, she joined the school, where she was persuaded to change her name from Patsy to avoid the perception that she might be attempting to "cash in" on the popularity of Patti Boyd, a top model who Fraser thought Kerrigan strongly resembled. She decided to go with the name Kim.

Keith Moon

It was through Kerrigan's work with the Dawn Academy that she was told about The Who, and was persuaded to see them at the local Bournemouth club, Le Disque a Go! Go!, where she met Keith Moon. She started dating Moon at the beginning of 1965. She believed that her father was the only person that Moon was ever intimidated by, adding that he was "very gregarious, very extrovert, he was a force to be reckoned with."
In late 1965, Kerrigan discovered she was pregnant with Moon's child. Consequently, she married Moon on 17 March 1966 at Brent Registry Office, and their daughter Amanda was born on 12 July. The marriage was turbulent; Moon denied he was married and a father to the music press on several occasions, insisted his wife end her modelling career while taking up modelling for Vidal Sassoon himself, and became violent and abusive towards her, particularly if she received passing comments about her attractiveness by strangers. On one occasion, Kim hid in the bathroom while Keith attempted to cut the door down with a knife; on another, after she had met an agent from Paul Raymond and accepted his business card purely out of politeness, Keith lost his temper and attacked her. Despite this, Moon still claimed to love his wife, and would regularly send her love letters when on tour.

Ian McLagan and later life

She left Moon in 1973, taking Mandy with her, after concluding his increasingly out-of-control behaviour could not be moderated. She shortly afterwards started a relationship with Ian McLagan, and divorced Moon in 1975, marrying McLagan on 9 October 1978, one month after Moon's death. The couple moved to Texas in 1994. Kim McLagan worked for several years at a spa resort on Lake Austin before opening her own aromatherapy and cosmetics business.
McLagan died on 2 August 2006 in a traffic accident in Travis County, Texas, aged 57. Her car was hit by a truck and she was pronounced dead at the scene. She was survived by her daughter Amanda "Mandy" Jane Moon DeWolf, and grandchildren Jessica and Samantha.