Paul Barber, best known as Denzil in Only Fools And Horses, reveals how humour helped him cope with a life spent in foster care, as his autobiography, Foster Kid, is published.
Can you imagine one of Del Boy’s mates gracing the red carpet at the Oscars in Hollywood?
Well that’s where dodgy Liverpudlian Denzil, aka actor Paul Barber, found himself with a bunch of northern pals including Robert Carlyle when The Full Monty, in which they starred, was nominated for a clutch of Oscars at the 1998 ceremony.
Paul, who played Horse in the film, was quick to shake hands with screen idols Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams and Burt Reynolds, among others.
“Judi Dench was up for an Oscar that year,” he recalls. “I tapped her on the shoulder and just said how much I loved her film and that I was quite nervous about the event. She turned round to me and said, ‘I’m sh***ing myself!' What a great woman!”
Paul sometimes wonders what he’d have done if he hadn’t taken up acting. At one point in his early life he was on the verge of turning to crime, when he and a mate attempted a break-in after dark at a shop in Liverpool, Del Boy-style.
After emptying jewellery from a display cabinet, the two would-be thieves made for the exit, but heard a clicking sound. Paul then saw a bright beam stretching across the room and waved his hand through it several times, fascinated by the clicking sound (which was of course the beam activating the burglar alarm).
By the time they got out of the building, the police were waiting for them, torchlights on full beam, in a rabbits-in-the-headlights scenario.
Paul was sent to a remand centre for two weeks for breaking and entering – and decided there and then he didn’t want to spend any more time in institutions.
Indeed, he had spent much of his childhood in care and his experiences are detailed in his memoir, Foster Kid.
Growing up in Liverpool, he was orphaned at seven when his mother died from TB (his father, a merchant seaman from Sierra Leone, died from the same disease when Paul was under two). Looking back, Paul, now 56, believes that a succession of bad experiences with foster parents made him feel unloved, unwanted and ugly.
“Living with my mother up until the age of seven was my happiest time. I had no worries, no fears, no anxieties or awareness of being black.”
When his mother was taken ill he was thrown into a world of chaos and confusion, being moved firstly to a convent with two of his three brothers and his sister, where he and his siblings were subjected to a cold, cruel environment and regular beatings.
“My life became a game of survival,” he reflects.
He recalls one incident in which his brother, Brian, faced the wrath of a nun when he refused to eat the liver served to him. She dragged him to the entrance of the canteen and hit him in the face, then with the gravy ladle when he lay helpless on the floor.
“It was the first time I’d seen real physical violence,” Paul says. “There was nobody there to protect us.”
His mother visited them in the convent once before she died.
“I think she came to say goodbye, but I thought I’d be going home with her. That was my constant question. I’d keep asking her, ‘Are you better now? When are we going home?' I was that excited.”
Six months later grim reality struck. She was never coming back.
“By that time I was with foster parents. I broke down in tears. All that time I had refused to believe she was dead. I had to come to terms that I was an orphan.
“I felt that we had no-one. We had to rely on strangers and so-called foster parents.”
Paul’s first foster parent was a woman who ran a “boarding house from hell”. She took in children to increase her income but didn’t care about them, he says.
Paul, then eight, had started bed-wetting, so her solution was to cut up a long roll of linoleum and tie it around him, leaving only his hands and feet sticking out at either end.
“The rest of my body was encased and I couldn’t move. It took two of them to lift me up and place me on the bed. There was no mattress, just springs. I was scared of her. I was battered by her a few times.”
When he was eight, Paul, in his innocence, got into a car with a stranger and was sexually abused. Police became involved but his foster mother made him feel dirty and shameful about the incident, he recalls.
“Police came round to reassure me, but my foster mother treated me like a leper, like it was all my fault. I was made to feel like a dirty little boy. It still angers me now.”
Humour helped him cope with day-to-day misery: “I’d be walking home from school knowing I was going to be in trouble for something or other and at the same time I’d be whistling Walking Back To Happiness!”
Like many of his peers, he joined a band in Liverpool and played a few gigs before he fell into acting. One time, he was accompanying a friend to an audition for a national tour of the musical Hair, when the director asked if he’d like to have a go as well. Paul sang Yesterday by The Beatles and got the part but his pal didn’t.
The role in Hair put him on the path to London and a career in showbusiness: “It was like meeting a new family. For the first time I felt that people were interested in me. They made me feel like I had something to contribute. For the first time in my life I felt wanted.”
After Hair, Paul landed a part in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. TV roles followed, including that of Denzil in Only Fools And Horses and The Brothers McGregor, as well as the role of Horse in The Full Monty and more recently appearances in Dead Man’s Cards and The 51st State.
But Fools And Horses made Paul famous and even now people call out ‘Denzil’ in the street.
“I was never aware that Fools And Horses was going to be so popular. I just thought it was another acting job. But I became part of the gang. It’s just nice to be part of something that grips the nation and has them in stitches. It was great fun.”
There was a time when he was offered similar roles, he explains.
“In the early days most of the TV parts I was offered were either muggers or pimps. I cornered the market. Nowadays I’m being asked to play old geriatrics or fathers who are concerned about their sons taking drugs.”
He lives alone in a house on the seafront in Clacton, Essex, and has never been married, reflecting that his childhood may have something to do with it.
“I’ve seen so many people who have come out of the care system in unsteady relationships. I’ve just never felt the need to get married. Maybe I’m still trying to catch up on my childhood.
“I don’t regret not having children. I was brought up with so many deprived kids.
“I’m just grateful that I’ve been privileged to get into showbiz. I’ve made a lot of new friends and I’ve learned a lot.”
Foster Kid, by Paul Barber, is published by Sphere, and is available now
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