Just after he retired from Strictly, Sir Bruce invited REBECCA HARDY to his home for what turned out to be his final, and most reflective, interview.
As we retell it today, it makes extraordinarily poignant reading …
He WAS a national institution. A workaholic. The undisputed king of light entertainment, a catchphrase never far from his lips.
But despite the seemingly inexhaustible energy that fuelled Sir Bruce Forsyth’s astonishing 75-year-career, the veteran entertainer loved nothing more than Sundays at home with his wife.
‘I’d stay in bed in the morning, get up for a Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, then go back to bed. I’d wake up for the football at 4pm and then see a movie with my wife. I’m not one of these people who have to be on all the time. I do switch off.’
Sir Bruce Forsyth, who died on Friday at the age of 89, surrounded by his family at his Surrey home, gave me his last ever interview in the summer of 2015.
Sir Bruce Forsyth, who died on Friday at the age of 89, surrounded by his family at his Surrey home, gave me his last ever interview in the summer of 2015
Chatting at his immaculate home overlooking the Wentworth Golf Club, his devoted wife Wilnelia (left) in the background, Sir Bruce may have been slowing down a little, but he was keen to scotch any rumours of retirement
Chatting at his immaculate home overlooking the Wentworth Golf Club, his devoted wife Wilnelia in the background, Sir Bruce may have been slowing down a little, but he was keen to scotch any rumours of retirement.
‘I’ve retired from Strictly, but I’ve not retired,’ he told me, referring to his recent stepping down as the host of the BBC show.
On the day we met, he was in reflective mood. ‘I think I’m a semi-spiritualist in a way,’ he said. ‘I do believe in spirits and the supernatural. I can’t believe that, with all the things that go on, you don’t come back in another life or that your spirit doesn’t go somewhere else or inspires somebody else. It doesn’t seem possible.
‘The thought of death would have scared me more 20 years ago, but not now. I look back at all that has happened to me and realise how lucky I’ve been. I appreciate everything that’s happened, especially when it came to the knighthood [Bruce was knighted in 2011]. That was an achievement. So, I would go quite peacefully.
‘I wouldn’t turn round and go: “Oh why? Why now? I’ve still got so much to do.” Because, I’ve done so many things and been in so many successful things.
‘How many people in showbusiness have had three of the top shows ever on television? If you have one in a lifetime you are lucky.
‘But nothing was bigger than Sunday Night At The London Palladium, nothing was bigger than The Generation Game, nothing was bigger than Strictly. So, how fortunate I am to have had this life.’
Fortunate, yes. But few worked harder for it than Bruce — and he was a perfectionist. ‘I just want to get things right and do the best I can,’ he said.
‘I’ve always criticised myself. I’ll watch myself back and pick holes in a performance, thinking: “Why didn’t I say this instead of that?”
Entertainer Bruce Forsyth and his wife Wilnelia celebrate his award of a CBE in 2005
Sir Bruce Forsyth performs on the Avalon Stage at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 30, 2013 in Glastonbury,
‘I get depressed if I’m not happy with what I’ve done. It’s not that I’m in a depressing cocoon I can’t get out of for days. I do get down, but I soon get over it. Something funny will always make me laugh.’
He paused, thinking for a moment, before leaning forward in an I’m-going-to-let-you-in-on-a-secret sort of way.
‘I have been a bit depressed about my golf. It’s such a fickle game. I always say: “How many people do you see coming off the 18th green with a smile on their faces?” Maybe if you’ve had a hole in one. I’ve had four, but who’s counting? Over the years, golf’s got the better of me. I’m in the throes of giving it up. I haven’t played for a few weeks and I can honestly say I haven’t missed it. I was a good golfer — an eight handicap. Now I’m a bad 16.
‘I can’t bear to do something badly. This is where my professionalism comes in. At the moment I’m playing golf badly, and that will eventually get on my nerves, especially as I’m getting older because things seem bigger in your mind.’
Bruce Forsyth with Stricly co-host Tess Daly
What things? ‘You get a few more aches and pains than when you’re 50 or 60. And you have to be careful you don’t fall when you’re my age.’
We’re both reminded of his old chum Cilla Black, who had died after a fall in her Spanish home the month before we spoke. ‘When I first met Cilla she was 19. She was just a kid. So, although she was 72 when she died, I still think of her as a kid. Bless her.
‘So many people have died in the past few years. When I look at my friends’ deaths, the recent ones and the not-so-recent ones, like Sammy Davis Jr — he’s been dead for 25 years — I think how lucky I am to have had all those extra years to perform, to be somebody in showbusiness and to enjoy such a marvellous life.’
It was a life born of aspiration and a deep hunger for success. ‘I had ambition from when I was nine years old and first started tap dancing,’ he told me. ‘You want to be a star. You want your name in lights and all that nonsense.’
THE ambition was shared by his parents, garage owner John and singer Flo, who passed away before Bruce became a household name.
‘My father worked on cars all his life, but he never had a new car himself. I’d have loved to have got him a Rolls-Royce with a big ribbon round it and say: “Dad, here’s a little present for you. Thanks for looking after me all these years.”
‘My father saw me get the job at the Palladium. He enjoyed a couple of years of that. But my mother never saw what happened to me. We would sit down and watch Sunday Night At The London Palladium together.
‘She’d always say: “I’d love to see you up there on that stage, boy.” [Bruce replaced original host Tommy Trinder in 1958.]
‘She had so much ambition for me and did so much. She’d sit for hours sewing sequins on my costume. Even if she saw it [the Palladium show] once, that would have been her ambition recognised.’
Sir Bruce Forsyth with his then-three week-old granddaughter, Anastasia Monro, in a recorded message on the Christmas edition of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ in 2015
His parents suffered devastating heartache when Bruce’s older brother, John, died at the age of 20 during World War II.
‘John was in the RAF and there was an accident involving three planes. It makes you think about life. OK, accidents happen, but you kind of say: “Why did it happen?” Why are others taken and you’re given these extra years?’
Bruce was 15 when his family learned his brother had been killed on a training exercise in Scotland. John’s body was never recovered, so he was reported as ‘missing’. His parents were devastated and their life as a family, which included older sister Maisie, was irrevocably changed.
‘It breaks a family,’ said Bruce. ‘The effect on us was terrible, particularly my mother. What was cruel was that because he was reported missing, she held onto the belief he’d been picked up by a steamer in Scottish waters and ended up with a loss of memory. She hung onto that for quite a few years.’
He shrugged. ‘Luck comes into everything. The thing I’ve dreaded more than anything is becoming a bitter old pro — seeing your billing getting smaller. I started small and it got bigger and bigger, which is fine, but when it goes the other way . . .’
Bruce Forsyth as a young entertainer pictured playing the banjo Taken from his autobiography
Bruce shook his head. ‘When your agent doesn’t phone you as much as they should and you’re squeezed out of the business — I couldn’t have taken that.
‘It’s only when you start climbing the ladder of success you realise how difficult it is. You need luck to be in the right place at the right time and to get the right job at the right time. Why do some people have more luck than others?’
Since his start in showbusiness at 14 as Boy Bruce the Mighty Atom, he found performing addictive. ‘People talk about drugs, but there’s no high in the world like standing there with an audience, knowing you’ve done a good job and they want you to stay on for more.’
Better than a hole in one? ‘Oh definitely,’ he chuckled. ‘Pleasing an audience is the greatest high. I can’t describe it better than that.’
Again, he leaned forward to confide. ‘From 1958 to when I started Strictly, I always had an audience right in front of me to bounce off. With Strictly I was working to a camera. My natural way of working was completely destroyed.
‘For the first couple of series I was a fish out of water. I didn’t have contact. I can honestly say I didn’t enjoy the first few years. I started to get used to it, but it’s a thing I never felt comfortable with.
‘It’s a wonderful show, but I knew at the end of my last series that was it. It’s a lonely show in as much as I didn’t work with anybody. I only saw the dancers when they’d finished, so they were out of breath.
‘Tess [Daly] and I said hello at the start, did a joke — hopefully — and at the end we’d say goodnight so I didn’t have the interaction I love. Even off-camera I wasn’t near enough to any of them to get into conversation. Len [Len Goodman] would say hello in the dressing room. So would Anton [du Beke]. . .’
The sentence trailed away as another thought occurred. ‘I would have loved to have seen him being given a chance at the job and I would have helped Anton do the transition, but the girls [Tess and Claudia Winkleman] were marvellous when I was off for the three breaks they gave me, and fully deserved their opportunity.
Bruce Forsyth, television entertainer, with his arm round his second wife Anthea Redfern
‘For me personally, in my own inner thoughts, when I was walking back to my room on that last series I was thinking: “That could have been the last time I say good night.”
‘I went on holiday with my darling wife and we talked it over. When I came back I had made up my mind. It’s the longest show I’ve stayed with. I didn’t want to get stale or feel I’d overstayed my welcome.’
Perish the thought. Bruce entertained generations with his gentle wit and those catchphrases, from ‘I’m in charge’ at the Palladium to ‘Keeeeep dancing’ on Strictly and, throughout, ‘Nice to see you, to see you, nice’.
‘My life is like a flash. From when I did the Palladium until now feels like five weeks, not 50-something years. It’s incredible. I can’t believe I’ve done the things I’ve done — the shows, the personal bits. I look at the lovely side of my private life and think I’m as lucky as I am in my professional life.
‘I’ve got such a strong family — five daughters, a son, nine grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and with all the husbands, I sometimes wonder: “How have I got a family this big?”
‘We’re like a unit, mainly because of Wilnelia. She’s such a family person. She embraces them. Nothing can be more difficult, if you’ve been married a couple of times, than to keep that because so often you’re encouraged to break from your kids, and for an easier life you settle for that.’
Bruce was married to first wife Penny for 20 years (of which they were separated for ten) and then to Anthea Redfern for six. A year after they divorced he met Winnie (pictured with their son Jonathan), now 59, on the judging panel of the 1980 Miss World contest
Bruce was married to first wife Penny for 20 years (of which they were separated for ten) and then to Anthea Redfern for six. A year after they divorced he met Winnie, now 59, on the judging panel of the 1980 Miss World contest. In 2015, they’d been married for 32 years, but a third marriage was the last thing on his mind.
‘With two ex-wives and five daughters, I thought I wouldn’t be involved with anyone for a long time — if ever. Any divorce is painful. The last thing in the world I wanted was to get married again. But not only was Wilnelia the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my life, she was the nicest.
‘I’d known lots of beautiful girls, but she had a niceness I’d never found before. That niceness has carried me through. If there’s any young at heart left in me, it’s because of her.
‘Showbusiness has got very vulgar. I don’t mind a saucy joke, but on stage or on TV I’m a bit of a prude. I feel uncomfortable when I hear comedians swearing and talking about sex all the time.
‘Although I’d love to be younger, I don’t know how I’d cope growing up in this world. I don’t know what would happen to me. I don’t think I’d fit into today’s television. I don’t think I’d become a star and do all the wonderful things I’ve been able to do, including meeting my darling Winnie.’
As if on cue, his lovely wife popped her head around the door. Bruce’s face lit up like the footlights at the Palladium. ‘So, you see, I’m very fortunate,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye the years could never diminish.
How we’ll miss him.