Gary Cockerill - From Coal Dust to Stardust

At the moment there are three people in this little house: Ann and Brian Cockerill and their three-year-old daughter Lynne, soon (far sooner indeed than anyone actually realises) to be joined by me. Ann and Brian are childhood sweethearts who met at the age of 16 at the Gaumont cinema in Doncaster. Brian – devilishly handsome, the spitting image of Tony Curtis – was mucking about with his mates throwing popcorn down the top of the curly-haired, bigboobed brunette in the row in front until Ann – beautiful, ballsy, typical Scorpio – turned round to give him an earful, having apparently already given him an eyeful.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Having both come from solid, working-class families with the same family-orientated values, the couple married at 21 after a traditional courtship and my sister was born two years later. By the time I came along, Dad had a secure job working at the Doncaster Royal Infirmary as a painter and decorator and my mum handled the paperwork in a clerk’s office. My earliest memories of her are in a neat pinstripe pencil skirt and a little ruffled blouse, her wild hair shaped into a bubble of curls – a cross between EastEnders’ Angie and Jill Gascoigne from The Gentle Touch.

Mum never did make it to hospital that morning. I made my appearance into the world at 6 a.m. in the chintzy comfort of my parents’ bedroom with Dad panicking outside the door and one of the neighbours roped in to help poor Mum. It was the last time in my life that I was ever to be early for anything.

My parents didn’t have a very good track record with baby names – my sister was called Tinkerbell until she was a good few months old – and similarly Gary wasn’t the first choice of name for their son. For the first few weeks of my life, I was called something completely different. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Dad putting his foot down, the name on the front of this book would read ‘Ivor Cockerill’.

My attention-grabbing arrival into the world was to prove typical of my need to be in the spotlight at all times. Although I was quite small at birth, about 6 lbs, I would take as much milk and affection as I could get and quickly blossomed into a chubby, red-cheeked little cherub. And so, for the first few days of his life, Ivor-turned-Gary and his folks lived in the same blissful, chaotic, exhausting bubble as any other young family with a new baby. But then, just three weeks later, my family’s lives were turned upside down, inside out and very nearly destroyed.

It was a Wednesday and Mum was getting us both up and dressed when she started to get terrible pains in her arms and chest and then suddenly, without any warning, my slim, active and outwardly completely healthy 26-year-old mother suffered a devastating heart attack and collapsed. When it became clear after a few minutes that Mummy wasn’t going to wake up – even with her new baby brother screaming the place down – Lynne (who, remember, was just three at the time) managed to get out into the garden, climb over the fence and knock on a neighbour’s door to tell them that Mummy was poorly. The ambulance arrived just in time.

The attack had been caused by a massive blood clot, which was eventually linked to her being on the Pill. She was one of the first women to try this revolutionary birth control drug – almost a guinea pig. The damage to Mum’s heart was so extensive that the doctors at the hospital in Sheffield where she lay in intensive care warned that her life was hanging in the balance; even after she made it through the first few days they gave her five years, max. With a job to hold down, two very small children to look after and no idea whether his young wife would ever make it out of hospital, my distraught dad moved us all in with Mum’s parents, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Jean.

Just five months later, Mum – with typical bloody-mindedness – proved all the doctors wrong by being well enough to leave hospital, but the attack had left her seriously weakened and she was warned that the slightest physical exertion could kill her. Even today she gets out of breath very easily and has to have regular check-ups. I don’t actually think the doctors really understand why she’s still alive. So throughout my entire childhood my mum’s poorly heart was at the back of my mind. Whatever we were doing, from swimming on family holidays to going on the swings at the park, I was aware that we had to watch out for Mum – well, someone had to because she certainly didn’t seem that bothered about herself.

Far from taking things easy, she became obsessed with TV-AM fitness queen Mad Lizzie, putting on her tracksuit every morning before work to do star jumps in front of the telly. But it was because of Mum’s heart that a few months after her return from hospital my parents sold our two-storey house on that steep street in Balby and bought a new-build bungalow on a private estate in the nearby mining village of Armthorpe, where they still live to this day.

To me, that three-bedroom semi-detached bungalow with its neat front and back garden will always be home. My memories of growing up there are coloured with love, laughter and food; my parents might not have had much money, but they always made absolutely sure we had the best of everything.

Sundays were a particularly happy time in the Cockerill household. Dad would cook a huge breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausage to keep us going until one o’clock, when Mum would serve a traditional roast with all the trimmings. Our modest dining-room table would be crowded with guests. There would be all the cousins, my aunts and of course Granddad Joe (former ICI factory foreman who loved a flutter on the horses) and Grandma Jean (golden-blonde bingo queen).

My grandparents argued non-stop; an outsider would have probably found it upsetting, but to us kids it was better than a sitcom, like Victor Meldrew and his wife.

As soon as Mum had cleared away the lunch things she would tie on a pinny and start baking, so at teatime we would have fluffy sponge cakes fresh from the oven and rounds of perfectly trimmed sandwiches. My sister and I would listen to the Top 40 countdown on Radio One in our pyjamas and then straight after the Number One our mother would swoop.

‘Right, you two, off to bed now.’

She ran a tight ship, did Mum.

Every summer we would have two weeks at the seaside, somewhere like Whitby, Scarborough or Bridlington. Almost as exciting to me as the beach and its many attractions was the prospect of going to see a show. One year we caught legendary drag star Danny La Rue in summer season and I was completely knocked out by this man who was dressed as a fabulously glamorous woman.

Another time we were staying in a boarding house in Scarborough and Barbara Windsor – then a huge Carry On star – was staying in the room next door. I remember walking out on the landing and bumping into this tiny, curvy blonde, probably barely taller than I was back then.

‘Ello, darlin’, you alright?’ she said in that instantly recognisable voice:

Funny to think that she’s now one of my closest friends …

Our summer holidays also provided an opportunity for Dad to indulge in his favourite hobby – painting landscapes. He is an amazingly talented artist and I know he would have loved to pursue it as a career, but he put his family first and stuck to the safer, steadier option of being a decorator. In a way I suppose you could say I’m now living his dreams for him, except that I paint on faces rather than canvas.

I grew up surrounded by Dad’s pictures on our walls at home and he influenced me profoundly. We might have failed to bond over Doncaster Rovers and DIY, but we shared a real love of art and he did everything to encourage my passion, buying me an easel, paints and art books. I would sit for hours alone in my bedroom with my sketchbook, usually drawing women’s faces – whoever was famous and fabulous at the time, be it Joan Collins as Alexis in Dynasty , Lady Di, Barbra Streisand or Madonna.