To my parents, Pam and Bill;
and to Neil Sinclair
Thanks to Neil Simpson for his help with writing the book. Thanks also to Lesley Duff and Charlie Cox at Diamond Management.
contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue – Waiting and Worrying
1 A Boy from Oldham
2 Finding My Voice
3 Stage School
4 On the Boards
5 The RSC
6 Roman Holiday
7 Living Large
8 The Real Me
9 Double Takes
10 Panto Dames
11 The Reverend Ossie Whitworth
12 Hollywood – and Back
13 East End Boy
14 Oh, Puck – It’s Liza
15 My Golden Girls
16 The VAT Man – and Neil
17 Men Behaving Badly
18 Fabulous at 50
19 Back on Stage
20 The Jungle – and Beyond
Copyright
Five men and five women face the cameras at the lavish Versace Hotel on Australia’s Gold Coast. After just one day of luxury, they are divided into two groups, put in helicopters and boats, then led off into the jungle. It’s November 2007, time for the latest series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and these ten faces will soon be the most talked-about people in Britain.
I wasn’t one of them.
I didn’t even know who any of them were.
When Malcolm McLaren got cold feet – and Janice Dickinson and Lynne Franks had their first fabulous row – I was locked away in a sky-high suite in another, slightly less glitzy Australian hotel. I was in seclusion. No television. No internet. No newspapers and no phone calls home.
A charming assistant – or was she my jailer? – seemed to be outside my room at all times. She even vetted the room-service staff, so I didn’t get any clues about events in the jungle. I was going to be the surprise late arrival in that year’s I’m A Celebrity. And I was absolutely terrified. In little over a year’s time I would be 60. Why on earth had I agreed to spend up to three weeks sleeping in a hammock, showering in a stream and eating food from a bonfire? This was not the Biggins way.
Shame about that no-telephone rule. Good job I’d smuggled in a spare mobile. So for a few glorious moments I thought I might get some vital information from the UK. I rang my partner, Neil. ‘Has it started? Is it on? Who are the celebrities?’ I asked, desperate for an idea of what might lie ahead of me.
‘There’s a real monster of an American woman,’ Neil told me. Who could that be?
‘And then there’s the girl from…’
There was a loud, angry knock on my door. My assistant had heard my whispered conversation. The mobile was confiscated, my knuckles were rapped and my last link to the outside world was removed. ‘The girl from where?’ I asked myself. And it would be a while before I found out the monster’s name.
I gazed out over the golf course from my hotel suite for two long days and nights. By now I imagined that the other celebrities would all have bonded and be living happily in their camp. I wasn’t sure they would want a late arrival. Would I be welcome? Would I know who anyone was?
The more I thought about the show the more I worried. And the more I was told about the jungle the worse it got. Dr Bob and his team certainly didn’t sugar-coat the pill when they came round to tell me about the hazards I might face. It was all poison this, bite that, danger the other. Looking back, I think I can see why Malcolm headed home. It’s suddenly made very clear that this is no sanitised television studio. Serious things can happen.
‘Are you ready?’ my minder asks.
I’m smiling. ‘As I’ll ever be.’
And off we go for my one, very brief spell at the Versace. I do some photos, give some final interviews, then it’s back into a blacked-out van for an hour and a half’s drive to a grimy little motel in the middle of nowhere. As instructed, I’ve got my regulation three pairs of underwear and two pairs of swimming trunks, and I’m given the pack of other clothes that I’ll have to wear from now on.
It’s very, very early in the morning, though I don’t know the exact time. My watch has been taken from me, and the crew who lead me into the jungle have theirs covered with masking tape. The mind games have begun. No words are spoken. I follow when the crew indicate that I should. I stop when they hold up their hands. All I know is that it’s prime time back in Britain and that I’m doing a live trial. The crew leave me behind a tree and after a few moments I hear familiar voices. Ant and Dec.
Then I hear something else.
The dulcet tones of one Ms Janice Dickinson.
When I’m told to, I leave the safety of my tree and walk in front of the cameras.
This is it. But what have I done? In the next few moments everything is hysterical and fabulous and terrifying in equal measure. I realise, in one moment of absolute clarity, that I have given up all control of my life for the duration of the show.
I was on the I’m A Celebrity rollercoaster, the public could chuck me off at any moment and there was nothing I could do except be myself.
I hugged Janice, shook hands with Ant and Dec and took a very deep breath.
Would I be able to cope? What would the public think? Was I making the biggest mistake of my life?
It is fair to say that my earliest reviews weren’t good. ‘He won’t make old bones,’ pronounced my grandmother, looking down on the little lad in his mother’s arms. There was none of the traditional ‘Oh, what a beautiful baby’ messing around for good old Grannie Biggins. I’ve always been a straight talker. No prizes for guessing who I get it from.
And Grannie B wasn’t the only critic to think I was in for a very short run.
‘He’s so tiny he’ll be blown away in the wind when you take him home,’ the maternity nurses told my mother, perhaps a little too cheerfully for her liking. Then came the worst review of all. ‘If you don’t get