Gangsters, Guns & Me - Now I'm in Eastenders, but once I was on the run. This is my true story Read online

  To my mother and father, Julie and my boys

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To everyone at John Blake Publishing for this wonderfully cathartic experience, especially John and the lovely Michelle. With special thanks to Mark Hanks and Jo: cheers, Mark, for everything – couldn’t have done it without you.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  1 THE WAY IT WAS

  2 BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

  3 MURDER?

  4 GUILTY

  5 IN PIECES AND BACK TOGETHER

  6 A NEW DIRECTION

  7 THE WORLD’S A STAGE

  8 TRIAL OF A LIFETIME

  9 DAD AND ME

  10 THE PACKAGE

  11 ON THE RUN

  12 ACROSS THE POND

  13 STARTING OVER

  POSTSCRIPT

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  One of the lessons I learned when I was young is that nothing is forever. Before I’d reached my tenth year, my world was turned upside down when my dad was sent to prison for ten years. So much for the innocence of childhood. My dad was my life, and suddenly life was very different. Painful as it was, that experience made me grow up fast and in many ways taught me to make the most of any given situation. I learned that nothing is all bad – there’s a tiny bit of silver lining in even the darkest cloud. If there weren’t then life wouldn’t be worth living. Dad might have gone away for ten years, but that meant he’d be free in ten years too. We had to make the most of things. We had no choice.

  The first 25 years of my life was a wonderful rollercoaster, a journey filled with joy, pain, success, failure, love and adventure. Whatever happened, I always felt luck and gratitude for my life as I’d lived it. My family and friends were my world, and what a colourful, wonderful world it was. Life was a journey and then some.

  While dad was away I went from being the son of South London’s biggest face to a stage actor at the National Theatre. From there I moved to TV and eventually to feature films. From an early age I was under no illusions about what it took to be an actor: forget any glamour, a jobbing actor is a chameleon, a ducker and diver, but above all he is a hard grafter. I’ve loved every step of my journey and have always thrived on the feeling of not knowing what’s around the next corner. There are so many parallels between my dad’s world and the world of acting – streetcraft and stagecraft are pretty similar when you think about it – and my journey has taken me to some wonderful places.

  But there’s one thing I’ve never lost sight of. My roots.

  I’ve always played bad guys, and it’s often been observed that the criminal underworld I have known would have stood me in good stead for such roles. It’s true, but not because I’ve been around bad people. Sure, I’ve come across some nasty bastards in my time, but the truth about most faces and criminals is – like anybody – they’re a mixture of good and bad. Nobody’s one or the other. Perhaps that’s why I can play bad guys and give them a bit of layering, a bit of depth – I’ve seen the reality behind the silver screen cliché and I bring it to my work.

  I was shooting for the silver screen in the old East Berlin when my agent called me up with a question.

  ‘EastEnders have been in touch with an idea for a character,’ she said. ‘They won’t talk to anyone until they’ve had an answer.’ Coming in the middle of a coffee break with my friend Sean Pertwee, the call was a bit of a bolt from the blue.

  I was intrigued, of course. It’s not every day EastEnders call. Still, they had asked me on a couple of times in the last decade. I always felt honoured to be asked, but the character never felt quite right and it was the wrong time for me to get into continuous drama. I was always about films – getting in and out quick and moving on to another role, working with different people – and didn’t fancy month after month of the same role. Perhaps this time would be different, I thought. A few weeks later I was sitting around a table in Covent Garden with Series Consultant Simon Ashdown and Julia Crampsie, the casting director. They had a character in mind all right: Derek Branning.

  I loved the character from the word go. Derek’s a bad boy, to be sure – he’s so nasty he even makes me cringe – but the great thing about him is he’s also a charmer who truly thinks he’s a good guy. Those traits alone are enough for a rich character, but the more we talked, the more I felt this complicated, contradictory role could really work for me. Also, the writers and producers wanted to make me part of the creative process when developing the role. To me, that was really flattering, a real token of respect. I knew I could make Derek a character the eight to ten million people watching the show would really love, or at least love to hate. Finally EastEnders had come up with the perfect role for me – third time lucky I suppose.

  Then it hit me: I’m going be in EastEnders! It was kind of scary, if I’m honest. For so many years I’d been in my comfort zone making movies, but this was different. I’d be working six days a week from 6am ’til 8pm, doing up to seven scenes a day with twenty pages of dialogue to remember. I’d be shooting TV scenes in an hour that would take a day on a movie set. I’d be on the telly four nights a week with an audience big enough to make a film a blockbuster. The last time I’d been so excited and nervous was way in the past.

  I was in at the deep end and it felt wonderful. I was starting all over again.

  It was a surreal feeling when I first walked onto Albert Square. I’d watched Enders all my life, and now here I was. Everything was so familiar, it was like stepping into a painting you’ve had on the wall for years. Strange but not strange. It’s a hard feeling to describe. That first day I took a few minutes to walk around and just take it all in. The funny thing was how small the square is in reality – the park’s only eight strides across. I knew a lot of the actors already – Shane, Perry, Jo Joyner, Laila, Lindsey Coulson – and they welcomed me with open arms. Everyone did. Before long I didn’t feel too much of a new boy at all. Walking into the Vic, seeing Alfie and asking for a scotch was like sliding into a comfortable pair of slippers. The only thing that was missing was my dear friend Barbara Windsor.

  We hit the ground running to bring Derek to the Square. Everyone was great, but I have to say Pam St Clement was phenomenal. In one scene, she established my character for me more easily than I could have done in four episodes. To see her as Pat, who’s never been frightened of anyone in 25 years, suddenly running scared from a man, showed everything about my character in one moment. Pam is a consummate professional and an absolute joy to work with.

  For the moment, EastEnders is where I’m at, and I’m loving every moment of it. Every day’s a challenge, and that’s how life should be. I couldn’t ask for much more than that. I’m grateful for each moment, but I’m also indebted to a part of my life that’s far, far away: my formative years.

  This book is about where I came from and the adventure it took me on. I learned a hell of a lot about life in the years when my dad was away from us, and even more when he joined me on the outside and we ended up ducking and diving in London’s underworld before finally going on the run to America together. Changing and adapting has become second nature to me, and EastEnders and this book are both just another stage of my journey.

  I’m a long way from the dark years of dad being in prison, a long way from being on the run. The silver lining is a lot shinier than it’s been at certain points in my life, that’s for sure. But without m
y family, my roots and my life less ordinary, I wouldn’t be the man I am today. The same goes for Derek Branning.

  Jamie Foreman, 2012

  THE WAY IT WAS

  I was brought up to be what we call a ‘straight goer’. I was taught to live my life honestly and not to do anything wrong. I was raised to be a good boy. To behave myself at all times and never to take anything that didn’t belong to me.

  Yet taking things that didn’t belong to him was exactly what my father went out and did every day. You could call it a moral paradox, but to me it was just the world I was born into. Dad did what he did to put food on our table and clothes on our backs. He did it because he wanted a slice of the good life and he had no other means of getting it. It was what he did; he loved the buzz and that’s the way it was. There are no two ways about it. I come from a criminal background and I can’t say I’m ashamed of it.

  I was born the second son of one of London’s most successful gangsters, Freddie Foreman. He had been at it for years before I came along and, wherever he went, his reputation preceded him. For years my dad had been involved in some of Britain’s most audacious armed robberies, and dealing with the most dangerous criminals working in Britain. It was his world, and there was no way my arrival on the scene would change that.

  Not that I had much of a clue about what he did. I was just a kid and my dad was, well, just my dad. He might have been out grafting and building his reputation, but it didn’t mean Dad wasn’t there to tuck in his kids at night with a story and a kiss. One of my earliest memories is the rustle of his mohair and silk suit, the faint smell of brandy on his breath, his strong, masculine aftershave and the feeling that I didn’t have a worry in the world. Dad was always there for us. There would come a time when I’d need to be there for him, but that was later. Much later.

  ‘Us’ was my mum, Maureen, my older brother Gregory and my younger sister Danielle, and, although we moved about a bit when I was young, my childhood really got going in Kennington, South London. We lived in Braun House on the Brandon council estate in a lovely, newly built high-rise flat and, at six years old, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

  It sounds like a cliché, but I was born into a time when the indomitable spirit of the British was at its strongest. The adults surrounding me had survived the war and the ensuing austerity. They had seen their neighbourhoods destroyed – there were bombsites on every corner (which made great playgrounds for us kids) – they had run out of food and lost loved ones in the blitzed London streets as well as on foreign fields. Yet they were bonded by values that nowadays are being sadly eroded. There was a marvellous sense of togetherness among the working classes – you didn’t steal from your own, you didn’t hurt your own and, yes, you did leave your front door unlocked. It really did happen, I promise. I remember two old sisters who allowed me and my mates to walk into their flat through the back door and make ourselves a sugar sandwich whenever we pleased. The only rule was that you never went past the kitchen. We never broke that rule, nor did it ever enter our minds to.

  In those days, council flats were something to be proud of. All the women used to clean their front steps and the landings, and the only smell on any block was that of Jeyes Fluid. That lovely, clean smell of antiseptic just about summed up how houseproud and respectable most people were back then.

  Not that I spent much time around the house. When I wasn’t at Henry Fawcett Primary School, I was mostly off playing with my mates. There was no better place to play than the streets. We’d be out from dawn to dusk, forever inventing new games, fighting new battles. I saw my fair share of fights, but they were mainly between older kids. I could hold my own and was always a good puncher. But I never had a fight with anyone smaller than me. Mind you, there weren’t many people smaller than me.

  If it wasn’t Mum calling me in at night, it would be my lovely auntie Nell, a pivotal member of the family. My Nell was a ‘Spitfire’ – small, feisty and beautiful. She looked after me when Mum and Dad needed to keep me ‘at a safe distance’. There’s no denying that Dad’s business meant it was sometimes best if I was temporarily out of harm’s way. But it didn’t bother me one bit – spending time with my Nell and my two beautiful cousins, Barbie and Geraldine, was always a joy. Barbie was like a big sister to me, and I loved her dearly. Nell would take me shopping down Lambeth Walk and then to the pie and mash shop – my favourite. Still is today. She was always fussing over me with the best food she could afford. I remember sitting in her tiny council flat in Lambeth North with her and my other aunts watching the Saturday-afternoon films on BBC2 while they drank tea and smoked cigarettes. You could have cut the smoke with a knife. I just loved sitting there with my gorgeous, indomitable aunts watching A Tree Grows In Brooklyn or some other weepy, and seeing them by turns crying, laughing and gossiping about anything and everyone the films reminded them of. They often talked of the war and, although there were plenty of painful memories, it inspired such awe in me when I saw them laughing the past away together. Those precious afternoons played a huge part in teaching me to laugh in the face of adversity.

  Becoming aware of what Dad did, and of his power in the criminal underworld, was a gradual process. I would have had to be blind, deaf and dumb to think that he was a regular man working regular hours in a regular job. However, as a kid, I wasn’t told any more about him than I needed to know. And the truth was, I didn’t need to know much. Not that I wasn’t interested. The older I got, the more fascinated by the mystery of it all I became. As a result I was a sponge for everything that happened around me. It was like being a detective in one of the movies I loved – Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, say – only the case I was working was my life, and it was anything but dull.

  I remember walking with my auntie Nell down Lambeth Walk one day, and a man stopped me in the street. I must have been five or six years old, and I could immediately sense the alert in Nell. She obviously recognised the bloke as one of Dad’s enemies, and immediately created a bit of a brouhaha before stealing me swiftly away. It was incidents like this, combined with my dad’s insistence that I always told him where I was going, that made me realise I had to be on my toes when I was out and about. That is still true today. No one told me I was unsafe – I’m sure Dad always had me covered without telling me – but to certain people the Foremans were a prime target and I was taught not to take anything, or anyone, for granted. It was a valuable lesson that has stayed with me all my life. I developed a sixth sense for smelling a dangerous situation, and it would help me through many a tight spot in the future.

  There was plenty more for me to soak up when Dad moved us from our council flat into one of his new businesses, the Prince of Wales public house in Lant Street in the Borough. It was so exciting for a seven-year-old. To say my dad owned a pub was a big step up in my social circle – being the son of the local publican gave me a great degree of kudos with my mates that I have to admit I liked. Of course, there was another side to the enterprise that I was only dimly aware of back then. As well as being a good money earner, the pub was a good front.

  It was at the pub that I began to get more of an inkling about who, and what, my father was. Criminal or not, Dad was a man who didn’t take kindly to bad manners. And it soon became clear that, as a landlord, he wouldn’t have these principles trifled with. My mum told me that, soon after we moved in, he had a run-in with the local bully, who obviously didn’t know who my dad was. One day Dad was laughing and joking with some customers at one end of the bar while the bully was playing darts down the other end.

  ‘Quiet down there,’ said the bully, pointing a finger at my father. ‘Man at the oche.’

  Dad glanced up, the smile vanishing from his face. Mum sighed. Something was about to happen, and it wasn’t going to be the start of a beautiful friendship. All the signs were there – Dad was icy cool, calm and collected, with that flicker of anger in his eye. Not great news.

  Casually, Dad walked across the pub, past
the bully and up to the dartboard, which he ripped from the wall. He opened the door to the pub, walked outside and threw it on to the street. He’d been meaning to get rid of that dartboard, so I suppose this was as good a time as any. It might have ended there, but while my dad was outside the stupid sod who’d started it all decided to shut the pub door and lean on it. He was trying to shut my dad out of his own pub. Mum sighed again. Now there would definitely be trouble.

  Dad charged the door, which burst open and sent the bloke flying. Quick as a flash, Dad picked him up, knocked him spark out with one punch and slung him out the door.

  ‘No more darts in here,’ he said, dusting his hands off before resuming his chat with the customers. Before long, laughter filled the room again.

  There was a body and a dartboard in the street. Word soon got around with the locals that Dad wasn’t to be messed with.

  The pub quickly became a South London hotspot. Everyone used to go to the Prince of Wales, but they all called it Foreman’s. It was a lovely little place – red flock wallpaper from Sanderson, wood half-panelling on each wall and, on one of them, a beautiful 16th-century map of London. Around the walls hung silhouettes of Dickens characters – Uriah Heep, Mr Bumble, Bill Sykes and Oliver Twist surveyed us all. Dickens was significant because the great man himself had once resided in Lant Street when his father was in Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison just around the corner. The house Dickens lodged in had been demolished, but Dad had acquired its lock and key and proudly displayed it in a glass case. I even attended the local primary school called – you guessed it – Charles Dickens Primary. Little did I know that one day I’d play one of literature’s greatest villains, Bill Sykes, in Roman Polanski’s film of Oliver Twist.

  Foreman’s was the first pub in South London to have a wall-mounted jukebox. It played all of the latest releases before they hit the charts, thanks to the A.1 Stores in Walworth Road. They made sure you heard it first in the Prince of Wales. The atmosphere was always electric. It was the kicking-off place for young people’s nights out before heading off to clubs in Herne Hill, Hammersmith, Streatham or the West End. Young ‘faces’ from the manor – the Elephant and Castle, Walworth Road and Bermondsey – would come in with their beautiful girlfriends and the place had a sexual charge that was any young boy’s dream. I’ll never forget how it felt walking through the bar and being grabbed by all these pretty young women who wanted to say hello to little Jamie. By the time I’d crossed the bar I’d have lipstick marks all over me, and I loved it.