As Sean later remembered it: 'I looked at my friend and he just said, "Go get her." So I did.' On February 13, 1985, Madonna and Sean go on their first date together. After that, there is no question that they want to be together, for now and always. The following month, I move out to Los Angeles and stay with Madonna and Sean at his home in Malibu.

Madonna tells me she feels isolated, and I don't blame her. From the first, I get the distinct impression that Sean is reclusive and feels happiest hiding out at home with Madonna alone. Sean also loves his friend, the writer Charles Bukowski, who lumbers into the house, day or night, blind drunk and puking.

The moment he arrives, my sister escapes into the bedroom, disgusted. She loathes few things more than an undisciplined drunk.
Still, less than six months after they met, on June 24, Madonna and Sean announce their engagement. With his wedding to my sister on the horizon, Sean decides that now is the perfect time for us to undergo some hard-core manly bonding.

We are alone in his kitchen and he pulls out a jack-knife. 'Christopher, let's be blood brothers.' I'm shocked, but fight not to show it.

'Be what?' I ask as nonchalantly as possible. 'Blood brothers.' 'Oh, sure.'

'Show me your thumb,' he says, his tough-guy growl even more exaggerated than usual. I hold out my right thumb. Sean grabs my wrist with one hand and slices the middle of my thumb with the other.Blood drips out. I wince, but not much because I don't want Sean to think I'm soft. Then he slices his own thumb. He presses his thumb against mine and - for a couple of seconds - I return the pressure.

'Now we are blood brothers,' he says, and slaps me on the back. Then he goes to find Charles Bukowski, who has just finished throwing up in the bathroom. On August 16, 1985, in an open-air ceremony just up the Pacific Coast Highway at the $6.5million home of developer Kurt Unger, Madonna marries Sean. Stunning in a $10,000 strapless gown, with a 10ft train, Madonna has, of course, opted to wear white. Lest she be lambasted for being conventional, under her wedding veil she wears a black bowler hat.

The ceremony takes five minutes. I am sure the words are moving but we can't hear the vows because we are deafened by the racket of the helicopters above us. Madonna and Sean exchange gold rings. Then, to the tune of the rousing theme of Chariots Of Fire, which I can just about hear above the din, Sean kisses her and we all applaud. Sean makes a toast to Madonna but we can't hear it. Fed up, Sean charges straight into the house and gets a .45 pistol.

Madonna shouts after him: 'What's the big deal, Sean. Leave it be!' But Sean fires shots in the air, while Andy Warhol, disco entrepreneur Steve Rubell, Cher (in a purple spiked wig), the rest of my family and I watch, amazed. A few months later, Sean, Madonna and I fly to Hong Kong to start preparation for the filming of Shanghai Surprise, in which Sean plays a fortune-hunter looking for a fast track out of China, and Madonna the missionary nurse he falls in love with.

Madonna is thrilled to be making her first mainstream movie. Before filming starts, Madonna is hanging on Sean's every word of advice concerning her acting. But as soon as it begins, she stops playing a scene from Educating Rita and decides she is Meryl Streep instead.
It comes as no surprise to me when Madonna and Sean butt heads. At about 3am one night, I wake to the sound of furniture being thrown around in Madonna and Sean's suite next door.He's screaming at her with all his might. 'I'm the actor, you're not. You should forget about acting. Stick to singing instead, that's what you're good at.'

'And you don't know a ****ing thing about handling the media, you paranoid control freak,' she counters.

I hear him smash his fist against a wall. Then the sound of a table sent flying. I am about to break down the connecting door between our suites when, all of a sudden, it flies open. Madonna runs into my suite. Her face is flushed and she is crying. Sean is in hot pursuit, snarling with rage. Just in time, I slam the door right in Sean's face - and lock it. We listen in silence as Sean yells and bangs. Finally, Madonna falls asleep in my arms. In the morning, she's gone.

When I see her again on the set later that day, her make-up is immaculate, hair perfect, and she has a bright, confident smile. In June 1987, the 19-city US leg of the Who's That Girl? tour opens in Miami and 60,000 fans brave a tropical downpour to see Madonna. We are staying at the Turnberry Club, where Madonna, as ever, has the penthouse.Sean, clearly on his best behaviour, fills the suite with white lilies and white orchids and spends a couple of days with her there.

Even though they are staying in the honeymoon suite, I can tell this is the swansong for their marriage, and that Madonna is making an effort only because on July 7 Sean will begin a 60-day jail term for assaulting a photographer who snapped a picture of him on the set of his latest movie in LA.After Sean is released from jail in mid-September 1987, having served 33 days of his sentence, he and Madonna attempt to resuscitate their marriage but fail. She files for divorce but later withdraws the petition and decides to try to save the marriage after all.

It's 1988, and Sean is making a heavy movie, Casualties Of War. He is completely out of step with Madonna, her life, her art and her friends.
He's also far from amused by her latest playmate, the self-avowed lesbian comedienne Sandra Bernhard. Whenever I see them together, Sandra seems enthralled by Madonna, almost worshipful. In January 1989, I get a call from Madonna's agent Liz Rosenberg asking me to fly to LA. I call Madonna at once.

She says she is OK but her voice is small. Without going into great detail, she tells me Sean has been violent and abusive to her again.
She asks me to find a new house for her right away. Within a few days I have found her a home in the Hollywood Hills. A few months later, I visit Madonna there and almost pass out in shock. Her lips are enormous.

'Did somebody sock you?' I ask. 'No, I just hurt my lips.' Concerned, I ask how. 'I don't know,' she says. 'Perhaps I've got an allergy.'
Of course, she's lying, but I don't suspect. I haven't yet heard of collagen. If I had, I would have understood her reasons for wanting to acquire sultry, sensuous lips: she is about to meet one of the most notoriously libidinous men alive, Warren Beatty. Madonna is a bigger star than Warren now, but curious about what hanging out with him will be like.

Above all, my sister being my sister, she's acutely aware that being Warren's girlfriend is wonderful for her mythology, her status in Hollywood - and the positive effect on the final cut he, as director, will make on her latest movie, Dick Tracy. At the height of her romance with Warren, Madonna tells me that he wants to meet me. I'm both flattered and immensely curious. I accept Warren's invitation to join him and some friends for dinner at his house on Mulholland Drive.

A long table for 20 people is covered with a simple tablecloth, no table decoration, and set with rather ordinary china. Dinner conversation is light; Warren drinks little. Madonna, in a short black skirt and black top, sits next to Warren but isn't the least bit kittenish.

'Wa-a-ren Batey,' she whines halfway through dinner, 'I'm getting bored.' Of course she is. Warren has been expounding on Gary Hart's chance of making it to the White House. My sister always gets bored unless the conversation centres on her, her next tour or her next album.Chocolate mousse is served. My sister wolfs it down, stands up, announces, 'I'm done,' and walks out of the room.

Warren, however, isn't the least bit insulted. I can tell he's amused by Madonna, but that their relationship is more father and daughter than highly passionate fling.Throughout dinner, they have rarely touched. In all the times the three of us are together, I never see Warren and Madonna kiss or cuddle or even hold hands. Still, one day when we're having coffee, she says Warren has asked her to marry him. I put down my mug, completely surprised.

'So do you think I should, Christopher?'

'Well, do you love him?' 'I think so. What do you think?' I tell her I like Warren and think he will make a great father, but I don't say much else because I sense that my sister isn't truly in love with him.Warren is perceptive enough to sense that Madonna has other fish to fry and that, as far as she is concerned, he definitely is not the only game in town. One night when I am staying at her Hollywood Hills home, I wake up thirsty at around 3am and go to get a glass of water.To get to the kitchen, you have to go past the office. As I walk down the long hall to the kitchen, in the shadows I see Warren in the office. It looks to me as if he is going through my sister's wastebasket.

I quickly walk on into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water, making sure to create a lot of noise. When I walk past the office again, Warren is gone.What is incontrovertible is that his relationship with her starts to spiral downwards. The last time I see my sister and Warren together is at the Washington premiere of Dick Tracy. After that, their relationship just fizzles out. They have been an item for only 15 months. No fireworks, no recriminations herald the end of their romance. Just a slow, gentle fade-out.

As The Girlie Show Tour finishes in December 1993, I feel my life has somehow ended. In contrast, Madonna's is moving in a new and dramatically different direction; she plans to get pregnant. She doesn't yet have a father in mind, so she launches on what she calls The Daddy Search.

She tells me her maternal instinct is starting to kick in. I believe that she wants and needs someone of her own, something of herself to carry on when she's gone, and I surmise that she wants to be the mother she never had, and to have her child experience the maternal love she never received herself. She is determined to find a father for her child and her search becomes a running theme between us.

Going to a sperm bank is unthinkable for her as the Press would find out in two minutes flat. She decides to select a man to father her unborn child, whether she marries him or not. We come up with the term Daddy Chair. Every now and again I ask: 'Who's sitting in the Daddy Chair today?' She requires the ideal candidate to be smart and good-looking but has no strictures about race or religion.

For a while the actor John Enos, who appeared in Melrose Place, is in the running. Then she goes to a New York Knicks basketball game at Madison Square Garden and fixes on Dennis Rodman - the 6ft 7in player famous for his tattoos and multi-coloured dyed hair.The next time she's interviewed on television, she makes sure to mention how much she wants to meet Rodman. Three months pass but Rodman doesn't contact her. My sister isn't a quitter, so she engineers an assignment to interview Rodman for Vibe magazine and flies to Miami to meet him.

In his autobiography, Bad As I Wanna Be, Rodman claims that the moment the interview ended and the photoshoot began, he and Madonna were 'just all over each other' and that they went straight to bed. According to Rodman's book, she tells him exactly what she wants: that he father her child.Along the way, she tells me she's frustrated by the fact that his schedule doesn't coincide with her ovulation and that Rodman's estranged girlfriend still seems a factor.

'In any case,' she says, 'it's nice to have to chase someone around for a change.' In the end, the 'estranged girlfriend' turns out not to be estranged from Rodman at all. Nor does Rodman exactly fit into Madonna's lifestyle. Rodman's days are numbered and my sister launches another casting call. In autumn 1994, Madonna meets Carlos Leon, a personal trainer, in Central Park. Soon after she tells me he fits the Daddy Chair perfectly - and that he is an aspiring actor.

'Great, another actor,' I say. 'Shut up, he's sweet,' she says. I meet Carlos and she's right. He is sweet. He's also handsome and sexy.
But she's not sure he fulfils the intelligence requirement of the Daddy Chair. I meet him and decide he is a fish out of water in Madonna's rarefied world, but he's far from stupid.At the beginning of 1995, we have long conversations about her relationship with Carlos. I know she wants their relationship to last for ever. But by November, Madonna says she feels mistreated and that she won't stand for being treated like a doormat or disrespected.

Despite the fact that she changes the locks on their New York apartment, I realise she regards Carlos as far more than a stud she has cast in the Daddy Chair - she is in love with him. But I am not surprised when she finally splits for good from the man who had fathered her daughter Lourdes.

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