Paul Daniels (46 page)

When he is not touring with us, which is most of the time, Martin is off doing the comedy clubs, the corporate work, summer seasons and all the jobs that make our business tick over. You don’t have to be on television to make a career in showbusiness. In truth, most of the business is done away from broadcasting anyway. He and his wife, Jo, are very happy and even more so now that they have Lewis to look after and to play with. Lewis is walking. That happened when he was one year and one day old, on Boxing Day. Martin had a video camera pointed at him as he played near the settee. Lewis looked up, saw the camera, and walked. Show-off! I wonder where he gets that from.

My youngest son, Gary, left ICI and went to work in computers for NHS hospitals in the Middlesbrough area. From being a podgy lump (we always use terms of endearment in our family) he suddenly got into aerobics and is now a streamlined hulk, he tells us. He is living near Middlesbrough with a lovely, funny, happy girl called Lisa, whose father runs a pub. If only the pub had been on a golf course it would have been perfect.

Paul, the eldest, is still my biggest worry in life. Hey, it can’t all be good, can it? For years he drifted in and out of our lives, sometimes for months and wouldn’t bother getting in touch to tell us how he was getting on. He meandered from job to job and seemed mostly to be out of work. In his personal habits he wasn’t too clean and preferred the scruffy look of the streets. Still does, as far as I know. He just did not want to be
part of the family, and yet kept coming back as if he did. It is all very disconcerting.

For years, I blamed myself – the going away, the divorce and all that messy stuff in my early life. Psychiatrists would go down that route maybe, but there comes a time in your life when you are old enough to look around and realise that not all relationships are perfect. If the early life disturbed Paul, surely by now he has the experience of his own failed relationships to build on? Me? I was always the cock-eyed optimist, always hoping that he would pull through and start contributing to society in some positive way.

I did all I could for many, many years. I hung on to any shred of hope that was visible, but there was none. He was an excellent magician, although he told the newspapers that he didn’t like the art at all. I suspect that he was frightened of the comparison with me and I can understand that. He was constantly uncontrollable and I never knew what he was up to. When Paul turned 30 I had to realise that he was now a man. This was the time when I decided that I had put up with enough; I could no longer ‘bail him out’.

I worried, cared and thought about him constantly. For years, he was the last thing I thought about at night and the first concern that hit me every morning. He still is.

The worst moment came one day when I was having a meal with friends and I got a phone call.

‘Paul is in prison,’ the voice at the other end said.

‘For what?’ I needed to know but feared the worst.

‘Some kind of fraud.’

Paul, being a biker, had realised it was very difficult to get insurance cover and had formed his own insurance company. Whether it was deliberate or not I will never know, but he got it wrong, didn’t set the system up correctly, and a government office closed him down. The press made a meal of him standing
in court alone as he was sentenced. He went to court alone because he had never told any of the rest of the family he was going. We’d have all been there for him.

Legally, he had committed fraud. It was a serious offence and he got 12 months. According to Paul, he had been told that, as a first offender, there was no chance of him getting a jail sentence and that is why he never bothered calling us. Who will ever know?

It’s not easy to get into prison to visit someone. There were days of telephoning to find out how to get permission to visit. Eventually, I drove to Pentonville and went through the procedures of forms and what you could and couldn’t take in, door after door locking behind me. It’s a good job that I had been to have my claustrophobia cured the year before or I would probably never have made it inside. There are times when you don’t want to be recognised and this was all of them. There is a strange embarrassment in the other people who are visiting and even in the warders. I didn’t care, I just wanted to see my son.

There should be school tours of the worst side of prisons; they are bloody awful. Hopefully, it would scare them to bits and they might think twice about committing their crime.

Paul was sitting in a long room of tables, the aisles of prisoners separated from the aisles of visitors by low partitions. He was noticeably frightened and obviously unhappy. The sentence had hit him hard and he had woken up with a jolt from his ‘it’ll never happen to me’ attitude. He told us that he was in the ‘mildest’ part of the prison, but he still hated it. I honestly believe that if they had put him into the worst part for two weeks, with him expecting to be there for a year, and then told him to go home with a warning that if he ever came back they’d put him in for three, it would have made a difference. As it is, anyone going inside does what every human being does in
any situation, they just get used to it. I could do nothing. I left Pentonville gutted.

As often as I was allowed to, I visited him. It never got better. His girlfriend Sam visited him and even Debbie made the trip ‘inside’. Martin and Gary came down. All of us hated seeing him trapped.

A few weeks later, he was transferred to Ford Open Prison where he boasted that he had played in the same football team that George Best had been part of. As I sat and listened to him while on a visit, he said how much he admired some of the things the other lads had done and told me how easy it was to fiddle money out of a telephone box. What schooling.

During this period, we decided to refuse any interviews for the gaggle of press constantly sneaking around us. Publicity was the last thing he needed at this time while he was doing his best to get himself back on his feet. The tabloids were only interested in him because of me and I was keen to protect him.

In the meantime, I wrote almost every day. I wrote my diary, told him what the family was up to and generally let him know that we all cared and were still rooting for him. If I was working abroad, I sent postcards. He answered a couple of times and I was thrilled to receive his letters in reply. Together, we started to formulate a plan to help him when he came out. After being in prison for fraud, he stood no chance of getting a decent type of office job, so I suggested he became a local, self-employed handyman. He was a very skilled tiler and could turn his hand to anything. We considered general gardening, plumbing, decoration, electrical work and even small building work. He had the talents; we had to find a way to exploit them.

Together, and please note that I say ‘together’, we came up with a total plan that would swing into action on his release. Nobody knows when they are starting out in life for the first
time, or in Paul’s case, the second, exactly what is going to be best for them. We put together a package of occupations that Paul could do all at the same time until he found which was the best for him. We listed what we knew he could do and he agreed to each one in turn.

First, the name had to go. If he used his own name then he would always be associated with me. He carries the family name of Newton, so we called him Paul Newton. It is very difficult nowadays to work, especially in the areas we were discussing, without transport, so I said that I would buy him a van and a mobile phone to get him started. Every function that you go to nowadays has some table-hopping magicians and, as that was his forte, I knew that he could easily get work doing that with the big advantage for him of not being associated with me. During the day he would do tiling and light deliveries and any other job that came up needing a light van. This was all agreed and we mapped out everything in great detail. He asked for some magic props and everything was fixed.

It was ‘yes’ to everything and suddenly I felt we were starting to get him back on the right track. Maybe the blow of being in prison all those months had shocked him into surrender. I was pleased, relieved and extremely hopeful. The plan was ready and together we waited for the day of his release, which was to be some time near the end of 1998. Sadly, they did not let him out for Christmas with the family. That would have been a fantastic celebration. At 7.45pm Paul became an uncle, Martin became a father, I became a grandfather and Debbie insisted on being a Debbie. As the trouble and strife with Paul appeared to be coming to an end with all the plans laid out for his release, something else that was wonderful happened. Lewis was born on Christmas Day. Now that’s what I call a Christmas present. All day the whole of my family and Debbie’s family were on standby with the champagne ready. If there was a hitch, then it was
because Deb and I were stuck in pantomime and I couldn’t get up to see him for over a week as we had shows every day. The pantomime was in Tunbridge Wells and I was playing a schizophrenic Sheriff of Nottingham (Don’t ask!) I could hardly wait to see my first grandchild and give him a magic set. Just kidding. Only just.

Paul was finally released on New Year’s Eve. Who decides this stuff? A group of men, Paul among them, were all released from an alcohol-free zone into the biggest night of the year for getting drunk. Certainly in Paul’s case, it wrecked his chances of making a clean break before he even got started. Although I don’t even think that he realises it, I have noticed that it only takes a couple of drinks to change his personality. Alcohol seems to kick in fast with him. Predictably, he went straight home to his girlfriend in London and got smashed out of his brains. A couple of nights later, she kicked him out. I don’t blame her; he deals a tough hand. Strangely, later, he blamed me for having been kicked out, and I realised that he blames everybody for his misfortune except himself. He telephoned Sam threatening suicide.

That same night, straight after the evening show, I set off for Doncaster to see Lewis. The next day there were to be no pantomime shows. I had just left Tunbridge Wells when I got a call from Jackie to tell me that Sam had telephoned to say Paul had taken an overdose. I went icy cold and then very calm. As I drove, Debbie dialled Sam and the police and other services. The police phoned me back to say they had found him in a park and had seen him into a pub (where else?) but couldn’t do anything, as he hadn’t committed a crime. All that we had planned, designed and arranged, removed in one fell swoop.

I made for London and telephoned Martin to say we weren’t coming. The scene was incongruous as I arrived in my Bentley to pick up Paul who was dirty and smelly. I had no choice and I felt so sorry for Debbie. He’s not her worry and she got
lumbered. I took him back home, got him cleaned up and he went to bed.

In the six months that he had been inside, all he had learnt was to be bad. There had been no training as to why crime was wrong. There had been little investigation into his mental health. The system isn’t working to make things better. It is not enough just to lock them up; someone should be teaching them a better way and a better understanding, even if it is against their will. They are prisoners, aren’t they? On the night that we were supposed to be celebrating a New Year and a new birth, Paul had messed it up again and he was causing stress between Debbie and myself. It says a lot about the strength of our marriage that we survived the next couple of weeks.

For the next few days, Paul and I retraced our steps; We went back over the plans. It was very much along the lines of, ‘OK, you’re out and you’ve had your fling. You have to swallow the fact that you have spoilt your relationship with Sam, but there’s always a chance that if you get straightened up, you might see her again.’

We got him a phone. I went to the printers and had a few thousand postcards printed with his new ‘businesses’ advertised on both sides ready for a ‘leaflet’ drop. Local newspapers were scanned for flats or houses that he could live in locally. I would finance the operation and he would pay me back from his income. A week or so later, Paul and I went out for a drink and, when he promised to be home soon, I stupidly left him there.

He returned very late that evening and was immediately very abusive. Swearing and shouting at me in an alcoholic state, he climbed the stairs and went to bed. The following day, I awoke to find that he had packed his bag and left. I haven’t seen him since.

What hurt even more were the occasions when he went to the press, in order to make some extra money by selling stories
about me. They swallowed it the first couple of times but then the reporters started to phone me and tell me that he was so obviously lying that they wouldn’t print anything. They are not all bad, then. He still telephones the newspapers when he gets drunk and says he has a great story to tell, but it’s all old news and they ignore him now. I’m not sure if his problem is alcohol or schizophrenia, or a mixture of both, but I have had to shut him out of my head and realise that now, after all the chances he has had, it ain’t my fault. Even after all the pain, though, he will always be in my heart. He has a wonderfully close family waiting for him and it distresses me to think that he is missing all the fun that we share.

No one can help him now, but it is heart-breaking to think how bad he has become and I fear for his future. Paul is the only person who has the power to put an end to his programme of self-destruction, but I don’t think he ever will.

Apart from losing Dad, which is a natural part of life, and losing Paul, which needn’t have happened at all, I have very little to complain of in my long and full life. Every moment of every day is taken up with doing shows, planning shows, designing shows, chasing Debbie around the house (one day I’ll catch her) or driving north to see the family as often as possible. Whether I’m out walking down the street, driving or even in planes, there isn’t a day that goes by without someone coming up to me and asking if I am coming back on TV. I find that amazing, because I haven’t done a series now for several years.