From Coal Dust to Stardust

By the end of the day I was covered with a mass of the little coloured stickers they gave you when you successfully completed each round of auditions. I was recalled again the next day, and the following day I found out that I had got one of the parts. It was like finding one of Wonka’s golden tickets. A role in a West End musical! I was ecstatic, telling anyone who would listen that I was going to London to be a star.

When you’re 13 you think the world revolves around you – well, I know that I did. But while I was busy dreaming about seeing my name up in lights on Broadway, the rest of my family were falling apart.

My sister, by then 17 and working for a local knitwear manufacturer, had been seeing a boy called Simon whose parents ran our village off-licence. He was a bit of a lad and my parents were adamant that he wasn’t good enough; they wanted a doctor or a lawyer for their cherished only daughter. So when the relationship started to get more serious, Mum put her foot down and gave Lynne an ultimatum: either you stop seeing this boy or you leave home.

We’d always been really good kids and had never rebelled, so it must have been a huge shock to my mum when Lynne suddenly turned around and snapped: ‘Fine – I’ll move out.’ And the next day she was gone. Without much money to find a decent place to live, she ended up in Hyde Park, the red light area of Doncaster, sharing a shabby bedsit with a prostitute and a scarily butch lesbian.

Devastated that her daughter had gone, but too stubborn to change her mind about Simon, Mum stuck her head in the sand. Lynne wasn’t coping well either; each time I went to visit her she looked thinner, paler and more miserable. In the end she moved back home after four months, but although she gradually rebuilt her relationship with Mum, my sister stuck to her guns and refused to stop seeing Simon. And now, after more than 20 years of marriage and two beautiful sons, my parents realise that Lynne couldn’t have made a better choice for a husband.

This emotional chaos was all going on when I landed the role in Bugsy Malone, so you can imagine that when my parents found out I would have to move to London for the show they weren’t entirely enthusiastic. A few days after I’d heard I had got the part, Mum came into my bedroom and sat me down on the bed. It was immediately obvious we were going to be having A Serious Chat.

‘Gary, your dad and I have been having a talk.’ From her expression I knew this was going to be bad. ‘I’m sorry, love, but I’m afraid we both feel that it isn’t a good idea for you to do Bugsy Malone.’

She went on to explain that they were worried about me having to live so far away in London on my own and missing so much school. She told me that she knew how important the show was to me, but that my education was ultimately the most important thing and I would understand this in the future. I think she even said something about the fact that I would miss my friends. But I’d stopped listening at the point when my world had collapsed on hearing: ‘It isn’t a good idea for you to do Bugsy Malone.’

As you can imagine I was devastated. I cried, I screamed, I banged doors, I sulked for a week, but their minds were made up. To make matters worse, there was so much hype around the production that it seemed like every time I opened the papers or turned on the television there was some mention of the show. And looking back, I realise that it was the Bugsy Malone fiasco that marked the beginning of the end of my performing career.

* * *

A few months later I auditioned for Rotherham Operatic Society’s production of Carousel on the urging of my form teacher, a lovely lady called Mrs Empson who had always been a huge supporter of my passion for performing. I landed the role of Enoch Snow Junior, quite a principal part, but it was a disaster. For the first time ever I suffered from crippling stage fright, exacerbated by the fact that I fluffed my lines on the opening night.

Overnight my confidence and self-belief literally vanished. It didn’t help that adolescence was kicking in; I had turned from this cute blond kid to – well, a bit of a geek. My hormones were all over the place, my hair was going from angelic golden to plain old mousy, I was getting a few teenage spots. I went from desperately needing to be the centre of attention 24/7 to not being able to bear the thought of people even looking at me. Almost overnight I realised that I wasn’t going to be a child star after all; I wasn’t going to be famous and live in London like Andrew bloody Summers. At the age of 13, I faced up to the prospect that I was probably going to have to find myself a proper job, one that involved neither tap shoes nor TV cameras, and later that year I left Lynn Selby and Phil Winston’s, never to return.

Thankfully I still had my love of art to fill the void left by performing. At school I would find any excuse to liven up classes with a bit of drawing: my French vocabulary exercises were carefully illustrated with mini French loaves and bottles of wine and my geography books were filled with intricate sketches of volcanoes and fossils. I would often get my schoolbooks back from the teacher with a big red ‘This is not an art class, Gary!’ scrawled down the margin. But a career as a designer or illustrator seemed like a far more realistic goal than acting, and my parents were thrilled that I was focusing on what they had always considered to be my real talent. Without drama to distract me, I knuckled down and became a model student – until I found something else to distract me. And that new obsession was girls.

THREE Girl Crazy

In my teens my future seemed all mapped out. I was going to meet and fall in love with a girl, get married and have kids; just like everyone else in Armthorpe. Having a girlfriend was the normal thing to do for lads my age – and after the drama (both on and off stage) of the past few years, all I craved right now was a bit of normality. So from the age of nine and those first shy, secret kisses with Kerry Geddes I was never without a girlfriend until I was into my twenties.

When that first romance with Kerry fizzled out I started going out with a girl who lived round the corner, Michelle Chappell. Again, the relationship was predictably sweet and naive (a bit of kissing, some hand-holding, the odd fumble – real puppy love stuff) and my fledgling love life would have probably continued in the same innocent fashion if, at the tender age of 13, fate hadn’t intervened in the form of my 15-year-old babysitter.

I had gone for a sleepover with my mate Scott Phillips, who lived at the other end of my village from me. His parents had gone out for the night and left Jennifer, a friend of Scott’s older sister Mandy, in charge of us two boys. Jennifer was 15, extremely skinny and as far as I remember pretty average looking. I’d met her once or twice before this particular night but hadn’t given her a second thought. Anyway, by about 9 p.m. Scott had already sloped off to bed, leaving Jennifer and me sitting alone together watching the end of a film. I was just thinking about going up to Scott’s room when I became aware of Jennifer shuffling a bit closer to my side of the sofa.

‘Gary?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you fancy me? ‘Cos I think you’re really nice.’

I sort of shrugged, folded my arms across my chest and continued to stare at the TV. I had barely spoken to this girl before and certainly didn’t find her attractive; besides, she was so old. I was out of my comfort zone and I hoped that keeping quiet would mean the end of the conversation. But it seemed Jennifer had other ideas. I could tell she was still staring at me, and when she realised I wasn’t going to answer she swiftly pulled off her T-shirt, undid her bra and then grabbed my hand that was nearest to her and crushed it up against her tiny breasts.

Alarm bells went off in my head. Wide-eyed and barely daring to breathe, I continued to stare at the telly with one hand still stuck awkwardly against Jennifer’s chest. Nothing in my 13 years had prepared me for this situation. Of course, I should have made my excuses and gone upstairs to join Scott on his Doncaster Rovers bunk beds, but I was frozen with fear and confusion – a rabbit caught in a pair of (very small) headlights.

‘Well, what do you think of these, Gary?’ Jennifer was getting impatient.

‘Um …’ I eventually mumbled. ‘They’re alright, I s’pose.’

Well, that was all the encouragement she needed. Off flew the rest of her clothes and then she was down on the floor and telling me to take off my trousers. I remember the musty smell of the carpet and the light from the TV flickering on the wall as we lay there, Jennifer rubbing awkwardly against me while barking out orders. There was no kissing or caressing: it was cold and mechanical – I certainly wasn’t enjoying myself and I don’t think she was either. There was just a strong sense of embarrassment mingled with a vague curiosity, a feeling of what the hell is happening here?

Nonetheless, after a short while all the rubbing and touching led to its obvious conclusion, which seemed to satisfy Jennifer as she immediately sat up and got dressed then went back to watching the TV as if nothing had happened. I didn’t mention a word of what had happened to Scott and after that night I never saw Jennifer again. At the time, I don’t think I even realised that I had actually lost my virginity down there on that musty carpet.

* * *

Despite a few years of adolescent gawkiness and confusion, by the age of 15 it had all started to turn around for me. Physically I had filled out and mentally I had rediscovered some of that old Cockerill cockiness. Not only that, but I realised that I had in my possession a rare and precious gift: I knew how to talk to girls. After all, we had exactly the same interests – hair, make-up and fashion.

Well, after that there was no stopping me. I became obsessed with girls. Obsessed! Honest to God, Mum would come home at lunch-time during the week and catch me with my latest girlfriend. My usual type was blonde, blue-eyed and petite, and when the popular boys in school saw me hanging around with the prettiest girls they started to wonder, ‘What’s Gary’s secret?’ and I began to get lots of boy mates, too. I might have been useless at football, but I certainly got kudos for being a babe magnet.

At this stage of my life I didn’t know anyone who was gay, openly or otherwise. The only exposure I’d had to gay men was watching the likes of Larry Grayson and John Inman on telly, those Eighties stars of the small screen who camped it up for laughs, but even then no one actually referred to them as being gay or homosexual. I just could tell that they were a bit … well, different. But from an early age I had known that the feelings I had for my idol Madonna were very different from those I had towards the movie star Rob Lowe, whose poster also graced my bedroom wall. I worshipped Madonna and loved her music, but when I looked at Rob Lowe … I didn’t know if I admired his talent, wanted to look like him or even to be him, all I knew was that I just found that face incredibly appealing.

Throughout my early teens the thought occasionally crossed my mind that I might possibly be bisexual, but I wasn’t tortured by it. There was no particular angst or guilt that I was living a lie. When I was with my girlfriends I certainly wasn’t pretending they were blokes – I really did fancy them. But just before my sixteenth birthday something happened that would drastically shift my whole perspective.

It was one of those incredibly hot summer evenings, 9 p.m, but still light, and I was riding my bike back to Armthorpe after visiting friends in a neighbouring village with my mate Robert Connor. It was getting late, so we decided to take a shortcut home across a stretch of rough ground. Soon the grass got too thick to ride so we got off the bikes to push.

I think we may have had a couple of sneaky beers earlier in the evening and the conversation quickly turned to girls and sex. The heady combination of underage booze and the sultry heat of the evening had an immediate effect, and it was soon obvious that both of us were getting turned on. Minutes later we ended up behind a hedge touching each other.

It was almost over before it started, but I remember thinking it didn’t feel wrong. Quite the contrary: it seemed completely normal and natural to me. For the first time in my life I thought, ‘Hang on a minute – am I gay …?’

Robert and I both picked up our bikes and continued the walk home in sheepish silence. But as I lay in bed that night going over and over what had happened I made a conscious decision. Okay, so I might well be attracted to guys, but I knew that I definitely wanted to get married and have kids. Besides, I still really liked being with girls. I vowed the events of that night would remain a secret – after all, it wasn’t as if anyone would suspect that Gary Cockerill, Armthorpe Comprehensive’s answer to Mick Jagger, was actually gay!

It was only recently that I found out that when I was younger my Granddad Joe would tell anyone who would listen: ‘I’ll go to the foot of our stairs if our Gary doesn’t bat for the other side when he’s older …’

* * *

I breezed through secondary school. Bar a few girl-related incidents (I had a lot of lectures from a lot of different dads during my teenage years) I was a hard-working and well-behaved student, even being made a prefect in the final year. I did well in my O-levels – apart from Maths, which I took at CSE level and barely scraped a grade 5 – and gained A-levels in Art and English, taking Art a year early and still getting an A grade.

While my friends were planning on becoming electricians or plumbers, I was dreaming of a career as a graphic designer or illustrator. The school career advisers were quick to sound a note of caution – ‘There aren’t that many opportunities round here for that sort of thing, Gary. Why don’t you get a trade?’ – but I was determined I wouldn’t end up on the YTS or in an apprenticeship. I was going to go to art college.

Mum and Dad were as thrilled as I was when I won a place to study design and illustration at college in Doncaster. They certainly weren’t the sort of parents who would have supported the idea of dossing around India on a gap year. Sure enough, although I had three months off before the course started, any hopes I might have had of enjoying my last summer of freedom were dashed on day one of the holidays when Mum came into my room, dragged me out of bed and said, ‘Right, time to get off your arse and do something useful.’

I signed on the dole, but that wasn’t enough for Mum, who was still badgering me about getting a job, so I decided to do a City and Guilds course – that way I’d earn a bit of money and learn a new skill at the same time. I flicked through the list of dull-sounding courses until I spotted one in Hairdressing. It certainly wasn’t something I wanted to do as a career, but it sounded slightly more artistic than other options like ‘Warehousing and Storage’ or ‘Drink Dispensing’, which is how I found myself in a Doncaster city-centre salon called Mr Terry’s, learning how to cut, blow-dry and set hair.

Getting a formal training in what had up until then been just a hobby set my creative juices flowing and triggered a period of serious experimentation with my look. One particularly striking style was a sort of mullet with benefits: short and spiky on top, arrowhead-shaped sideburns and longer bits at the back that I would then perm. It was the Eighties after all. I also put streaks into my mousy hair with Sun-In spray, although they ended up a garish orange rather than the sun-kissed surfer blonde I had envisaged.

Still, I thought confidently, at least my daring new look would help me fit in with all the cutting-edge creatives I would be meeting at art college …

* * *

Doncaster Art College was housed in a forbidding red-brick building – more Victorian lunatic asylum than vibrant centre of creative excellence. Inside it was always dark and cold, even on the hottest summer day, and the warren of gloomy corridors echoed with the drip-drip-drip of long-neglected plumbing and the lingering smell of damp and disappointment.

I had assumed art colleges would attract exciting, passionate people, bubbling over with creativity and imagination. That may well be true, but not at the one I went to. It quickly became apparent that my course was a dumping ground for wasters who had gone to college because they couldn’t be arsed to get a job and reckoned art would be a soft option.

The teachers weren’t much better. I was there for five full days a week throughout term-time, but the work I actually did in that time could have been completed in half an hour. I had gone on the course to prepare me for a job in design, but the teachers were completely out of touch with the realities of the industry. They convinced us that we would walk into an amazing career as a designer or illustrator on graduating, but there was no preparation for how tough things were in the job market for new design graduates – particularly ones from the North.

I can’t even look back fondly on the social side of college life, as I only made two friends on the course and went to perhaps a couple of functions a term at most. This wasn’t me being unfriendly: most of the other students were only interested in getting drunk or high, and to be stuck in a room full of people off their tits on Ecstasy when the strongest thing you’ve had is a couple of vodka tonics is to experience a new level of tedium.

Perhaps my own expectations had been unrealistic – and I’m sure things are completely different these days – but I can’t tell you what a disappointment those two years at college turned out to be. True, I gained a BTEC diploma in Design and Illustration, but I can’t think of one useful thing that I learnt. The only positive to the whole experience was that it kept me off the YTS.

* * *

Thankfully, I had something to keep me sane during those dark years at college – Kim Foster, the girl who would very nearly become my wife.

I met Kim at a youth club party during my last months at Armthorpe Comprehensive. I had gone to the party with Robert Connor (we were still friends, having made an unspoken vow never to talk about what had happened on that summer evening bike ride) and we were hanging around by the edge of the dance-floor, nodding along self-consciously to ‘You Spin Me Round’ by Dead or Alive, when I spotted a girl I had never seen before. She was petite and girl-next-door pretty with lots of curly blonde hair, a sprinkling of freckles and very white teeth. In other words, right up my street.

‘Rob, check her out.’ I nodded towards where the girl was standing with some of her friends.

‘Oh yeah, that’s Kim Foster,’ said Robert. ‘Her dad’s a building contractor, does a bit of work with my old man. You’ve got no chance, mate.’

I turned and grinned at him, then went straight over to where Kim was standing and introduced myself, with Robert trailing sulkily along in my wake.

Kim was a year younger than me and lived in a village called Bessacarr that was only a few miles from where I lived but might as well have been on a different continent. I had known nearly all of the girls of my age in Armthorpe since infants school so there was an air of mystery about Kim, an alluring sense of the unknown that seemed almost … exotic. She knew nothing about me either, and I really liked the fact that I could reinvent myself when I was with her. I can’t say it had exactly been love at first sight, but cycling home from the party that night I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Although we hadn’t had a kiss that first evening – despite my best efforts – over the next few weeks Kim started to hang around with my group of mates and we gradually became closer. I knew that Robert fancied her too, and there was a bit of friendly rivalry over which of us could pull her first, but walking her home one night I took my chance, leaning in for a kiss, and from that moment on we were inseparable.

Kim lived a half hour bike ride from my house, but I would bomb round to see her on my racer every afternoon after school. Not only did I love spending time with her, I really enjoyed going to her house too. Her family lived in a big detached house on a private lane – much posher than our little bungalow – and I got on brilliantly with her mum and little sister Clara. Her dad was away working most of the time so I would be in my element, surrounded by females.

We had a really sweet, romantic relationship, always sending cards and leaving little love notes for each other, having cosy nights in watching videos or occasionally going out to local pubs and restaurants on double dates with our best friends Joanne and Martin. We had sex for the first time on her sixteenth birthday and – it being the first time I had slept with someone I had actually loved – it felt really special. I was experiencing that heady falling-in-love high of wanting to spend every moment with someone and I began to think that Kim could be The One.

* * *

One of the things that first attracted me to Kim was that she was a real girly girl; we bonded over our mutual interest in fashion and style. After we had been going out for a year or so she started highlighting her hair and experimenting with her look, and it was around this time that she first asked if I could have a go at doing her makeup. Although I had been sketching women’s faces for years, I hadn’t had much hands-on experience with lipstick and eyeliner beyond those early experiments on my sister’s dolls, but my artistic talent and lifelong obsession with glamour was more than enough to get me started.

Well, after that there was no stopping me. I’d transform Kim into Madonna from her ‘True Blue’ video one day, Cyndi Lauper in ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ the next. Stylewise, the Eighties were all about bright, clashing make-up, trashy clothes and frizzy perms – and I certainly didn’t hold back in those early makeovers. The results are pretty horrific in hindsight, although it seemed fabulously cool and creative at the time.

By the time I started college Kim had blossomed from a pretty girl into a stunning young woman with a gorgeous figure, and when I needed a model for the photography module of my course she was the obvious choice. She had left school by this point and was doing office temp work while she decided on her future direction, so when she turned out to be extremely photogenic and a natural in front of the camera it got her thinking about modelling as a possible career.

As she was a good few inches too short for the catwalk, I suggested she might think about glamour instead; I remember showing her a picture of Linda Lusardi in the Sun and telling her: ‘You could so easily do that.’ Kim just had the right smile, the right look – that magical blend of sexy yet wholesome essential for Page 3 models. The thought of my girlfriend getting her kit off in front of the camera honestly didn’t bother me; having been at stage school I knew it was just a performance. In fact the idea seemed impossibly glamorous to both of us, and I happily took a few topless photos of her that she sent to a local agency in Doncaster who then snapped her up.

I proposed to Kim on her 17th birthday. We had gone for a romantic curry at our favourite restaurant, the Indus in Doncaster, and I popped the question after we’d finished our dinner. I’d like to say that I hid a diamond in her saag aloo then toasted our future together with vintage champagne while a waiter played ‘Endless Love’ on the sitar, but the truth is rather less impressive. After our plates had been cleared away I got down on one knee and sheepishly presented her with a Cubic Zircona ring that I’d bought at Elizabeth Duke in Argos. Nevertheless, it was an incredibly special moment for both of us and we were in floods of tears as Kim sobbed out ‘Yes!’

When we told our parents they pretty much laughed it off. They knew we were much too young, but I’m sure they assumed it would eventually fizzle out and so, to their credit, they didn’t kick up a fuss. Good job too: if they had, we might well have done something daft like running off to Gretna Green to get married – and God knows how that would have turned out.