What was it like working with Roy Castle?
Oh blimey how can you talk about Roy? He was just…he was as good as everyone thinks he was. He was just the person that you wished was your next door neighbour or your uncle or your dad, you know he really was the perfect man. He was funny, he was warm, he would give you the time of day - even when he was dying. I’ll give you an example. It was his second bout of cancer and it was terminal. We all knew it was terminal and he’d had all the chemo, he was very bloated, he had no hair and do you know he did a railway thing all around the country trying to promote it? This was in his last days, he was terribly ill, and he was taking train journeys all around the country to promote his charity, the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and I was in hospital I’d just had my babies. Natalie was very poorly, she was in special care baby unit because her lungs weren’t developed and they were just two weeks and Natalie had just come out of special care that day. They had let me stay in the hospital so I had both my twins for the very first day and there was a knock on my door and I opened it and it was Roy and Fiona, his wife. I went ‘hiya Roy’, and he looked terrible, he was dying, it was two weeks to the day before he died. [Cheryl becomes tearful]. I went ‘Roy, how are you?’ and he went ‘never mind me, I’m not the important one here, how are those babies?’ [Cheryl starts crying]. I’m getting upset now thinking about it. And that’s what he was like. That is what he was like. It was never about Roy it was all about how you are, how happy you are and that kind of thing. I feel so privileged to have known him and to have worked with him. He was lovely, he was a wonderful man. When I first went to the BBC I was so in awe of him because at that time he’d been in carry on films and he’d been on telly so many times and Sunday night at the London Palladium and he’d appeared on Broadway he was a star. He should have been Bert in Mary Poppins, but he wasn’t. I was in awe of him and I went in thinking, ‘ooh Roy Castle’ and he welcomed me as if I was his old mate and he never ever made me feel inferior, he never made me feel like I was the new girl on the block he just, he was the perfect man, he was. He had his faults and he admitted his faults and he talked about his faults which I suppose helped him and it also made you realise that he is still a bloke, he’s still a human being.
14