This Is Your Life: Denise Welch

Denise WELCH (1958-)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Denise Welch, actress, was surprised by Michael Aspel - with the help of her husband, the actor Tim Healy - outside Manchester's Piccadilly Station after a day trip to London.

Denise, who was born in Tynemouth and trained at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, made her West End debut in the musical Yakkety-Yak in 1982. She later joined the Live Theatre Company, in Newcastle, before starring in a production of the musical Grease at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester, in 1984.

Her early television appearances include the children's programme Byker Grove and the BBC police drama Spender. She became a household name in 1993 when she starred in the ITV drama series Soldier Soldier and later gained further popularity when she was cast, in 1997, in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.

"It is impossible that my husband could have kept a secret from me!"

programme details...

Edition No: 1029
Subject No: 1004
Broadcast date: Mon 15 Nov 1999
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Tue 19 Oct 1999
Venue: Manchester
Series: 40
Edition: 4
Code name: Orders

on the guest list...

cast members of Coronation Street
Simon Weston
Vin - father
Annie - mother
Debbie - sister
Peter - brother-in-law
William - nephew
Olivia - niece
Tim Healy - husband
Matthew - son
Bruce Jones
Vicky Entwistle
Rodney Bewes
Jill Heald
Terry Cudden
Rosemary Hirst
Eve Ferret
Max Roberts
Phillippa Wilson
Ant McPartlin
Dec Donnelly
Rula Lenska
John Bowe
Denise Robertson
Philip Middlemiss
Lee Warburton
Brian Park
Ian Le Frenais
Jimmy Nail
Joe McGann

production team...

Researcher: Kate Greer
Writer: Joe Steeples
Director: John Gorman
Associate Producer: Helen Gordon-Smith
Executive Producer: John Longley
Series Producer: Jack Crawshaw
Producer: Sue Green

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

Street Life

from Elsie Tanner to Eddie Yates

Family Life

keeping it in the family

The Night of 1000 Lives

a celebration of a thousand editions

Tim Healy

Screenshots of Denise Welch This Is Your Life

Denise Welch recalls her experience of This Is Your Life in her autobiography, Pulling Myself Together...

My illness has obviously cast a shadow over much of my working life. This was never more apparent than on the day I was on This Is Your Life. Of course, I had no idea that it had been planned, so it took me completely unawares. As far as I knew, my schedule that day was to open a motor-trade show in London and then come back on the train to open a garden centre in Bolton. This was back when I was in Coronation Street and I was being offered a lot of personal appearances.

I remember my agent asked Tim to accompany me, and I thought, 'Why is he coming with me?' Well, it was to stop me drinking, apparently, because they knew I wasn't very well.

I went down to London, opened the show and got back on the train. I really wasn't well at all and I just wanted to get the next event over with and go home. Then, to my surprise, I bumped into my agent, Barry, on the train! He said he was going to Manchester to see somebody.

'Are you all right?' Tim asked.

'No, I'm not well.' I told him. I wasn't sure if I felt up to opening the garden centre. Everything felt a bit weird and surreal.

'Well, why don't you put some make-up on?' Tim said.

'Oh God. I just can't be bothered.'

'Go on, put some make-up on' he insisted.

'But why? I'm only going to a blooming garden centre in Bolton!'

When I got off the train, I spotted a man with a video camera.

'What's going on here?' I wondered. I didn't suspect anything, but there was something weird about it. Then Barry and Tim said that the car meeting us was at another exit to the one we usually used. So I followed them there and then bloody Michael Aspel got out of a white limousine! Aargh! It was just a bit too much; I was so poorly. What should have been one of the best nights of my life was an ordeal.

Worst of all. I then had four hours to wait before I went on and I spent them on my own with the make-up girl, which made me feel very panicky. So it wasn't the experience it could have been because of my illness, which was a shame.

There's a nice ending to the story, though, because some time after that, the production company for This Is Your Life had a massive party for 1,000 people who had been on the programme. I was number 1,000, so that was really cool, and it was a great party. I felt really quite proud looking around at all the other people who were there. [Bigredbook.info editor: Actually, Denise was subject number 1004. The 1000th subject was actor Ian Bannen]

Denise Welch recalls a similar experience of This Is Your Life in her autobiography, The Unwelcome Visitor...

Around the same time I did Stars in Their Eyes, I was due to go to London to open a car expo in Earl's Court, which was the sort of thing you did if you were in the number-one soap on television, watched by 20 million people.

Out of the blue, Tim announced, rather bizarrely, 'I'm going to come with you.'

'Why? I thought you had something else you were doing?' I said.

'No, no, I can do it another time. I want to come with you,' he insisted.

It wasn't that we never did anything together, but the opening of a car expo wasn't the sort of thing he would normally come to, and there was no need for him to be there, either, because everything had been organised in advance and I was going to be well looked after.

Later it transpired that my agent, Barry, had said to Tim, 'You must go with her, because we don't want her to drink.'

I didn't drink every day, but when I did drink I became powerless over it - and of course at these big events, people were constantly saying, 'Would you like a glass of champagne? Glass of champagne? Glass of champagne?'

I didn't have a cut-off point and I think Barry and Tim had visions of me phoning up from London, saying, 'I've met this great bunch of people and we're all going to Soho House and then we're going to a nightclub together, and then...'

As long as I knew that Matthew was okay and being looked after by someone he loved, it would have been very 'me' to embark on a spur-of-the-moment adventure after a few glasses of bubbles.

What I didn't know was that there was a reason why Tim had suddenly turned into the drink police. For months, he and Barry had been planning my This Is Your Life appearance, and it was going to be happening after the car show. Meanwhile, what Tim didn't know was that I wasn't feeling 100 per cent. It wasn't so bad that I needed to cancel - and I wouldn't have thought twice about cancelling an appearance at a car show if I'd been really ill - but I was feeling unwell enough to want a drink at Earl's Court, and not just in a social way.

Tim was very protective over me and made sure I didn't drink, which worked in my favour in one way, but not in another. Okay, I wouldn't be drunk for the show later, but neither could I calm my racing heart. By the time we got on the train back to Manchester, I was feeling poorly and anxious.

As we walked up the train corridor to our seats, I was surprised to see Barry and my other agent, Lindsay, coming towards us, 'What are you doing here?' I asked.

'We're going to see a play in Manchester,' they mumbled.

'That's nice,' I said dully.

My life was so ridiculous at the time that I had a double booking that day and had to then - or so I thought - go straight to open a garden centre in Bolton on the way home, and I didn't question that Tim was coming with me, 'Are you not going to redo your lipstick?' he asked me.

'Oh for goodness sake,' I snapped. 'Are you not bothered about me at all? I'm feeling terrible and I've got to go and open a garden centre!'

'Why not freshen up a bit?' he gently pressed.

I can't remember if I put some lipstick on. It's all a blur. Then the most nightmarish thing happened. The train drew in to Manchester, where a car would be picking us up and taking us to the garden centre in Bolton. As I got off the train, longing to be on my own, I saw a guy walking backwards in my direction holding a hand-held camera.

I was very famous at the time, so I assumed it was some punter making a sneaky video of me. 'Can you ask him not to do that?' I said to Tim.

A woman appeared and said, 'Denise Welch?'

'Yes,' I replied, caught by surprise.

She smiled. 'Your car is this way, round here.'

'Round where?' I thought.

Feeling like death, I followed her into an unknown (to me) corner of the station to find a massive great big stretch limousine waiting. As she opened the limo door, I said incredulously, 'A stretch limousine? To go to the Bolton Garden Centre?'

Everything seemed wrong; I didn't know what planet I was on. And things got a lot weirder when a grinning Michael Aspel jumped out of the limousine, holding the red book, and said the famous words, 'Denise Welch, this is your life!'

People I've spoken to who have done This Is Your Life say that this is a very surreal moment. Well, it was even more so for me, being in such a dark place to begin with. I had watched This Is Your Life as a child and always dreamt of being the subject of it, so it was sad that my dream came true when I was in that state. I felt awful. I did not know what was happening. And suddenly there was Michael Aspel in the back of a limousine.

Tim was also feeling the pressure, knowing how poorly I was. Fortunately, my acting skills kicked in automatically and I was able to show delighted surprise and all the rest of it, while silently trying to calculate how long it would be until the whole thing was over and I could go home to bed. Having done Tim's Michael Aspel the previous year, I knew that it would be hours and hours.

'I can't handle this, I can't handle this, I can't handle this,' I thought, my mind racing ahead. 'Who is going to be there? Who is not going to be there? I won't know half the people. How long will the night go on for?'

By the time I went into make-up at the studios I was almost monosyllabic, while trying to be somebody who was excited about what was happening. There was a big bunch of flowers waiting for me, but no wine in sight: Tim had obviously told the make-up people not to give me a drink, or maybe it was a general rule not to. After people like Oliver Reed had so disastrously taken advantage of hospitality before they went on programmes like Michael Aspel's chat show, Aspel & Company, the TV companies probably had a duty of care not to let you drink a lot.

I kept asking Ellie, the make-up artist, how much longer it would be until I went on set, all the while thinking: 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.'

It was an ordeal having to sit in the chair and close my eyes to have my make-up applied. 'Get on with it. Get on with it. Get on with it,' I thought. I was jumping up every five minutes, saying, 'Sorry, I really need the toilet.'

In the toilets, I would stare at my reflection, thinking, 'I need a drink. I need a drink. I need a drink to take the pain away.'

When I eventually walked out in front of the studio audience and my completely ridiculous, surreal This Is Your Life experience began to unfold, all I could think was, 'I can't wait for this bit to be over and to go to the party, so that I can have a drink.'

And that's exactly what I did, so of course I felt terrible the next day.

It was such a shame, because it was an amazing thing to be on This Is Your Life, especially as I was the 1,000th person to appear. At least my acting got me through and nobody had any idea of what was happening to me internally. It was a huge thing to survive without having a complete breakdown. I was amazed I managed it. Afterwards, it felt as if I'd gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson (and, although I hadn't been able to knock him out, I had definitely won on points). [Bigredbook.info editor: Actually, Denise was subject number 1004. The 1000th subject was actor Ian Bannen]

The postscript to this story is that a few days later I flew to Los Angeles to do a shoot for HELLO! magazine. So when my godfather, Ian La Frenais, came on as my final This Is Your Life guest - the all-important guest I hadn't seen for a long time, who they had flown all the way from Los Angeles for an emotional reunion - I whispered to him onstage, 'You know I'm coming out there in a couple of days, don't you?'

Magazines like HELLO! used to take people on really fabulous holidays to do photoshoots, and Tim and I, with Matthew, who was nine, went to Los Angeles for a fortnight and stayed at the Chateau Marmont. It was fantastic, especially as my 'From The Rovers to Rodeo Drive' shoot only took a couple of days and the rest of the time was ours.

Just recently, I happened to ask Ian La Frenais, 'When did you give up smoking?'

'You made me give up smoking,' he said.

'I did?'

'After This Is Your Life,' he said. 'I have never seen anybody smoke as much as you and Tim, and it made me give up.'

'I don't think I ever chain-smoked, though,' I said.

'Well, I remember you sitting at a Hollywood party I took you to, and you were drinking like a fish and lighting one cigarette after another,' he said.

I don't recall it, but I can believe it, because it was only a few days after This Is Your Life - and when I was in that surreal world of anxiety and depression, I did everything to excess.

Series 40 subjects