Trivia

Ferdy suffered from Parkinson's disease.

He received the Gay Krant award in 2006.

He became known with the songs Christine, Belijdenis, De stervende, Ziede gij me gere en Het Schrijverke , based on the poem 'Het Schrijverke' with the same name of Guido Gezelle.

He was an figurehead within the gay community, because he was in 1970 the first Flemish singer to come out.

In addition to being a singer, he was also active as a comedian.

More than fifty years ago, in the fall of 1970, Will Ferdy came out as gay. As the first known Fleming ever. "It's a different kind of sexuality, but for me there isn't the slightest difference in intensity between heterophile love and homosexual love," he said.

He started his professional music career at the age of twenty.

He performed as a singer and comedian, and took the stage name Will Ferdy because a colleague is said to have said to him: "Choose Will, because you want it so much." Under this name he grew into a renowned Flemish chansonnier.

He suffered a lot of mental and financial damage as a result of the outing. Ferdy later stated that he had "heavily paid" for his outing. "Not from the public, but from some organizations that suddenly avoided me.".

Within the LGBTQIA+ movement, Will Ferdy is seen as a pioneer and even a courageous hero. In 2015, he even received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Çavaria, the Flemish umbrella organization for LGBTQIA+ organizations.

In the seventies he had to spend a night in jail when he was ambushed by an undercover police commissioner who pretended to be gay.

His greatest success is the love song Christine, which is about a lost love. The song came out in 1965. Only years later it became clear that the lost love in his song is not called Christine, but Raf. In 2004 Ferdy recorded the song Christine again, this time under the title My friend.

He gave his last performance in 2014, when he was 87 years old. After that he sang "no more note" in his own words. When asked if he didn't miss it, Ferdy said: "No. I've been on stage for 68 years. I don't miss the audience, and I don't miss the applause.".

According to radio and TV maker Kurt Van Eeghem, he missed "hundreds of performances" after his outing. What hurt him a lot was that he was denounced by the church as a convinced Catholic.

Ferdy is known as the first well-known Fleming who was open to the public about his homosexuality. He spoke about this on TV in 1970. "I said it first to my friends and acquaintances, and then to my mother," he said at the time. "And now I'm just going to say it to the public. And if it were to cause me to lose interest or get less work, I'd be really sorry, but I wouldn't regret saying it.".