On the day of the final dress rehearsal we were running through the number with the choreographer on stage, while Lionel and the producers sat watching in the auditorium. It came to the chorus -‘And he painted matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs … – and, regular as clockwork, I kicked up to the wrong side. Suddenly there was a yelp from the auditorium, the orchestra stopped playing and then Lionel was bounding up on stage, this incredibly wiry streak of energy. I remember being very much in awe of him because he was on television every week. I also remember him having the most terrible breath. I have no idea whether it was garlic or cigarettes, but these are the sorts of things that stick with you when you’re a kid. (I should say that I’ve met Lionel a few times since and his breath has been absolutely fine.)
All the kids waited nervously as he strode along our ranks before coming to a halt in front of me. He was almost always smiling, which made it all the more terrifying now that he had a face like thunder. He pointed straight at me.
‘This boy’ – he said to the choreographer – ‘is getting the step wrong every time. You’ll have to move him to the back of the chorus.’
‘Of course, Lionel.’ The choreographer turned to me, furious that this little brat was making him look bad in front of the talent. ‘You, Gary – swap with Mark.’
And with that I was shuffled to the back, my cheeks burning with shame at my public humiliation.
‘Right, everyone’ – Lionel clapped his hands theatrically, then swept off the stage – ‘From the top. A five, six, seven, eight …!’
As the music started again I went through the motions, but my mind was elsewhere. A thought had suddenly wormed its way into my head. There are people here who are better than me at this. And that thought terrified me.
The Once in a Lifetime tour was to prove a bittersweet time for me. On one hand I was appearing in a major production and lapping up the nightly applause and attention. We were treated like celebrities – staying in the best hotels, accompanied by chaperones and even getting asked for autographs at the stage door. (I would always sign mine with a big swirly ‘Gary’; I never put my surname as I found it a bit embarrassing.)
I had a laugh with the other kids and, of course, my little girlfriend Kerry, although it was all very innocent – some kissing, a bit of hand-holding and one night a slightly awkward ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ session in a deserted dressing room. On the other hand, however, appearing in the show marked the end of my friendship with Gavin Morley, who had become my best – and up until then only – male friend. When he didn’t get a part in Once in a Lifetime with me, Nicola and Kerry, he left Lynn’s stage school and, as he lived in another village ten miles away, we drifted apart.
I needed all the friends I could get, as I had very few of them at school. When I was younger I’d always preferred to play with my sister and cousins, and then stage school became such a huge part of my life that I missed out on all the usual socialising kids do, the playing-out after school and the sleepovers. But it wasn’t just that; I had this strong feeling that I was different from my classmates – special even. After all, I often missed school for some audition or performance, I was occasionally on the telly, I even spoke differently from the other kids after all the ‘Red lorry, yellow lorry’ elocution exercises at Lynn Selby’s softened my accent. I hate to admit it, but I almost felt I was better than them – and, of course, that didn’t go unnoticed by my peers.
The bullying started harmlessly enough.
‘Oi, Gary, can I have your autograph?’ some kid would shout after I’d popped up in another advert or the local papers. Being a mouthy little sod at the time, I would never just ignore it.
‘Yeah, course you can!’ I’d shoot back, cocky as ever. ‘Bet you’re jealous, aren’t you?’
When I was ten my teacher contacted my parents to tell them I was getting a bit of hassle from the other kids, so my dad started taking me to karate lessons to help me take care of myself if any trouble kicked off. I loved the karate; it was just like another dance class for me, plus it was really lovely spending time with Dad. As I was to painfully discover, however, the whole self-defence aspect of karate – which had, of course, been the aim of the exercise – was pretty much lost on me.
I was on the school playing fields one day with Joanne, one of the few friends I had at the time. Joanne was a really lovely girl: funny, sweet natured, always smiling. She was also a quadriplegic, with neither arms nor legs, and confined to a wheelchair. It was one of the things that drew me to her, I suppose: in my eyes we were both different from everyone else, both outsiders. So on this particular day I was pushing Joanne and we were chatting when a group of three lads from my class came over and started making the usual cracks about me being in the local paper.
‘You think you’re so much better than everyone else, Cockerill … Nancy boy … Pansy …’
I gave them a mouthful back and kept on walking, but today it didn’t stop at verbal insults. Suddenly I felt an almighty shove and was knocked to the ground. Before I could move – or remember any of my months of karate training – I was roughly pulled up and held between two of the lads. I was vaguely aware of Joanne screaming, ‘No, leave him alone!’ Then an agonising explosion of white-hot pain as this kid kicked me in the balls with all his strength.
I lay on the floor, sobbing, winded, dizzily nauseous. I was still in agony when I got home that afternoon, but I didn’t tell my parents what had happened. Instead I pretended I’d fallen off my Raleigh racer. I suppose I was embarrassed what Dad would say if he found out I hadn’t stood up for myself.
* * *
13 February 1983. I still remember the exact date to this day. It was 10 a.m. and I was at London’s Olympia for the biggest audition of my life. Just me and 10,000 other kids going for 46 parts in the debut West End production of Bugsy Malone. Every corner of the cavernous space was filled with wannabe Bugsys, Fat Sams and Tallulahs. It was exactly the sort of scenes you see at the audition stage of The X Factor, except with shrill-voiced pre-teens and pushy parents.
By the end of the day I was covered with a mass of the little coloured stickers they gave you when you successfully completed each round of auditions. I was recalled again the next day, and the following day I found out that I had got one of the parts. It was like finding one of Wonka’s golden tickets. A role in a West End musical! I was ecstatic, telling anyone who would listen that I was going to London to be a star.
When you’re 13 you think the world revolves around you – well, I know that I did. But while I was busy dreaming about seeing my name up in lights on Broadway, the rest of my family were falling apart.
My sister, by then 17 and working for a local knitwear manufacturer, had been seeing a boy called Simon whose parents ran our village off-licence. He was a bit of a lad and my parents were adamant that he wasn’t good enough; they wanted a doctor or a lawyer for their cherished only daughter. So when the relationship started to get more serious, Mum put her foot down and gave Lynne an ultimatum: either you stop seeing this boy or you leave home.
We’d always been really good kids and had never rebelled, so it must have been a huge shock to my mum when Lynne suddenly turned around and snapped: ‘Fine – I’ll move out.’ And the next day she was gone. Without much money to find a decent place to live, she ended up in Hyde Park, the red light area of Doncaster, sharing a shabby bedsit with a prostitute and a scarily butch lesbian.
Devastated that her daughter had gone, but too stubborn to change her mind about Simon,