Ooh! What a Lovely Pair Our Story (2 page)

In fact, while I’m here, why don’t I give you a bit of autobiographical information about the Donnelly family? After all, if you can’t be autobiographical in an autobiography, where can you be?

My mam and dad, Anne and Alphonsus, came to Newcastle from Ireland in 1958. My dad’s always been known as Fonsey, a bit like the character, Fonzie, in
Happy Days
, although he doesn’t wear a leather jacket and hang out in American diners, it’s just an abbreviation. I’ve got six – yes,
six
– brothers and sisters, and I’m the youngest. From the oldest down, they are Patricia, who was born in the Mid-Ulster Hospital, Magherafelt, Northern Ireland in 1961, then Eamonn, Martin, Dermott, Moyra and Camalia who, like me, were all born in Newcastle. Even though she’s the next up, there’s still five years between Camalia and me, which means I really am the baby of the family. We grew up in a council house in Cruddas Park in the west end of Newcastle, which had three bedrooms, and you don’t need to be a property expert or a maths genius to work out that three bedrooms and nine people equals a bit of a squeeze. The four boys were in two sets of bunk beds in one room, the three girls were in another, and my mam and dad had the third room – it was just like
The Waltons
, but in Newcastle.

I had different relationships with each of my brothers and sisters: growing up, I annoyed them all in very different ways. As the eldest, Patricia was like a second mam to me, and she would always baby-sit. Eamonn took me to my first football match and, though Martin moved away to work as a joiner when I was quite young, he’s someone I’ve had a great relationship with since I’ve got older. Dermott was away training to be a priest, so I’d only really see him in school holidays, when we’d have a real laugh together. Later on, when I was about fourteen, I did briefly consider following in his footsteps, and the footsteps of my Godfather, Father O’Connell, and becoming a priest. Then I got the bus home from school one day and it was full of lasses from the local girls’ school, Sacred Heart. I knew right there and then that the priesthood wasn’t for me. Anyway, back to the family – I’m assured it’s just a coincidence that two of my three brothers left home when I was young, but I’ve got my suspicions. With Moyra and Camalia, I was the stereotypical younger brother, hanging around, annoying them when they had friends round and generally being a pain in the neck – it’s in the contract when you’re the youngest, isn’t it?

You’d often find the Donnelly clan at the Tyneside Irish Centre on a Saturday night and so, as I say, that was where I had my earliest performing experiences. I’d usually get up on stage and do a bit of breakdancing – it was the obvious artistic choice for a kid from Newcastle in an Irish Club. I’d do my turn and then go round with an ashtray, which would get filled up with loose change. Yes, the customers of the Irish Centre would all pay good money to keep me off that stage.

Fortunately, with so many brothers and sisters; I always had a readymade audience at home. My family would always encourage me, saying, ‘Do that dance again,’ ‘Sing that song,’ or ‘Watch out for the coffee table.’ You know that old cliché about the youngest in a big family having to shout the loudest to get everyone’s attention, being willing to do anything to get noticed and just wanting people to look at them? Well, I’d say that just about summed me up as a child. The showing off’s starting to make sense now, isn’t it?

That desire to perform made me a bit different from the other children, or, as they’re known in the North-east, bairns. Growing up on a council estate in the west end of Newcastle in the eighties, it wasn’t normal for kids to try and hog the limelight, not unless you count playing football or jumping ramps on your BMX.

There was a real sense of community in Cruddas Park. My uncle Frank and auntie Mary lived just around the corner, two doors down from us, with all my cousins. One of them, Ciaran, who’s a couple of years younger than me, was my best mate. He was the perfect friend – generous, a good laugh and, best of all, a couple of inches shorter than me. I still see him at family gatherings now, but we don’t get together as often as I’d like to. Maybe we should get a couple of BMXs and hit the streets for old times’ sake. Back then, there were kids constantly playing on the streets, and people would always be looking out for the bairns. Obviously I’ve got my rose-coloured spectacles on here, but I promise I’ll take them off soon. When we were kids, the summers seemed longer, there was always a game of British Bulldog or Headers and Volleys going on, and Cruddas Park was a great place to grow up. I honestly wouldn’t have changed a single thing about it. Which is just as well because, unless I invent a time machine, I won’t be able to.

Although I didn’t have an Irish Centre, or an ashtray full of loose change, there are similarities in our childhoods – for a start, I also grew up in the west end of Newcastle, within about a mile or two of where Dec grew up. I spent the first couple of years of my life in a flat in Westerhope with my mam Christine and dad Raymond and, when I was two, my little sister Sarha (pronounced Sarah) came along. We needed more space, so we moved into a three-bedroom council house on a cul-de-sac in Fenham. My nanna and granda, Kitty and Willy, who were my mam’s parents, lived opposite us, and me and Sarha would always go to their house after school for a cup of milky coffee and, if we were lucky, a Tunnock’s tea cake. We were only allowed one, because, as any child knows, ‘any more would have spoiled our tea’. Nanna Kitty was Irish. She was a Liverpool fan, thanks to her Irish roots, but she loved Newcastle United too, and I used to love watching the football with her. As for Granda, when I was growing up, we used to play in his garage and garden all the time, and he was, without a doubt, the most honest, kind and genuine man I’ve ever met. One of my biggest regrets is that my granda never lived to see how things have turned out for me. Him and my nanna were great with me and Sarha – what is it about grandparents that means they never, ever lose their temper with their grandchildren? My nanna and granda never, ever had a cross word for me and our Sarha.

When I was eight, my parents separated. I was old enough to know it was on the cards, and my mam and dad tried to work things out, but in the end my dad moved out and I didn’t see him for a few years. He later had a daughter, Emma, with a woman called Maxine and, although Emma is technically my half sister, Sarha and me class her as our sister and we all see a lot of each other. In 1985, two years after my parents split, my mam met the man who’s now her husband, Davey Woodhall. I liked Davey straight away, because he made my mam happy, and that was the only thing that mattered to me. He also treated me like an adult – he never asked me to call him Dad; he was always ‘Davey’ to me. When him and my mam met, Davey already had a daughter, Nicola, who’s four years older than me, and a son, Robbie, who’s four years my junior. Are you keeping up? There’ll be questions at the end.

Like Dec, I’ve got really fond memories of my childhood. After my dad left, my granda became like a father figure to me, and I loved growing up
in Fenham. There was a real sense of community there too, and that gives me and Dec one other thing in common – the ability to sound like we’re eighty years old when we talk about our youth. In the summer, we’d go to my auntie’s caravan in Amble, which was about thirty miles away, with my grandparents, and everything just seemed so simple and happy. In case you’re wondering, me and Dec are sharing the rose-coloured spectacles.

I had the same four best mates for most of my childhood – Ginger (real name Craig Jobling); Athey, aka Paul Athey; Goody, who’s Paul Goodwin; and Boppa, or Stephen Robson to his family, the teachers, or anyone else who was telling him off. (Just to make things confusing, Athey also had ginger hair, but two people nicknamed Ginger would have been too much.) I was very fortunate to have such great friends, and also to be the only one without a nickname. These days, I see Ginger occasionally, and I’m still really close to the other three. We used to hang around at the chippy in Fenham, because it was an equal distance from where we all lived, and because everything it sold was either deep-fried or fizzy – two very important qualities for any growing lad.

One thing me and all my mates had in common was very strong mothers. Most of us came from single-parent families, and the mams ruled the roost. If there was trouble at school, they went down there to sort it out, and a lot of them would work two or three jobs. I was really close to my mam, growing up. We had a fantastic relationship, and I’m proud to say we still do.

I’ve got so many happy memories of my childhood, although I did start early on the rocky road to romance. My first kiss was with a girl called Gillian, who lived at the top of my street. I must have been about ten, and me and Gillian were ‘playing out’, a phrase you don’t hear so much these days, but a pastime that was a big hit in the seventies and eighties. It basically means going out into the street and playing games. When we’d finished playing out, Gillian asked me in to hers for a glass of juice.

Oh yeah, the old ‘glass of juice’ line, eh?

We went up to her room and she sort of stuck her lips on mine. Despite my tender years, I instantly felt very grown up, and I also assumed that, because we’d had a snog, Gillian was now my girlfriend – and the best
thing about that was that I could brag to my mates about it. Imagine my shock, a few days later, when I heard Gillian had been snogging other boys too. I wasn’t particularly heartbroken, just confused. Fortunately, Athey, who was the first person I’d told about me and Gillian, cleared it up for me.

‘Did you ever ask her to be your girlfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Then she’s not your girlfriend and she can kiss who she likes.’

Gillian had played me like a violin and, between her and Athey, I learnt some serious life lessons that day.

As for me, I made the big leap from the Irish Centre to the telly thanks to the local paper. My dad has always read the
Evening Chronicle
, and I’d often look at the Newcastle United news in it. One night, as I sat on my BMX beanbag, I noticed something very interesting – an article that said the BBC were going to shoot a new children’s drama in Newcastle. After some encouragement from my mam and my sister Camalia, I did what any confident, precocious twelve-year-old would do in that situation – I rang them and asked for an audition. I can still remember taking the big cream phone out of the hallway and into the living room to make the call. Strangely, the woman at the BBC, who’d obviously had the life bothered out of her all day by kids who’d seen the article, hadn’t heard of Declan Donnelly, the famous kid who nearly got
Geordie Racer
, so I had to act as my own agent. But I cut a very good deal with myself – I took 15 per cent of my own earnings.

The BBC woman told me to write to the producer and send a photo. Again, my mam and Camalia were really supportive and helped me. I can’t remember exactly what I said in that letter, but I’m pretty sure it included the words ‘Irish Centre’, ‘dancing’ and ‘ashtray’.

I got a letter back from the BBC a few weeks later. Basically, it said, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ It sounded to me like they were trying to palm me off and, I don’t mind telling you, I considered retiring again.

Then, a few days later, there was a phone call informing me I had an audition – the programme was called
Byker Grove
– and I was to go to the BBC in Newcastle the following week.

They sent me a few pages of script through the post to learn, and I went along to the audition. At the end of it, after I’d recited those carefully learnt words in front of a hastily assembled video camera, they said they’d like me to come back on Saturday for the shortlist day, where I’d be reading again – this time for the part of Winston.

I can’t picture you as Winston – you’ll always be Duncan to me…

The shortlist day turned out to be a full drama workshop. It was horrendous. I was incredibly nervous, and it all felt a bit pretentious and actor-y to me – plus, I was one of the youngest there, which didn’t help. I might’ve been a natural show-off, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed pretending to be a tiny acorn growing into a huge oak tree. It seemed more like
Gardeners’ World
than
Byker Grove.
By the end of it, I was practically wearing a cravat and calling everyone ‘luvvee’.

I got home and just lay on the sofa, thinking about how awful it had been, convinced I was never going to get the part and that I’d been an idiot all along to think I would.

The phone rang later that evening. It was the producer, and he said, unfortunately, they weren’t going to offer me the part of Winston. I knew it. I was just about to inform him not to consider me for any future opportunities in showbusiness as I would be retiring forthwith, when he asked if I would be interested in playing the part of Duncan.

I immediately said yes, in a voice that was supposed to sound cool, calm and collected but came out squeaky, high-pitched and over-excited. My family were thrilled too. As far as we knew, none of the Donnellys had been on telly before, and they were all very proud of me.

Right there and then I started a glamorous new life, a life where I, Declan Donnelly, pretended to be someone called Duncan for a few hours every week. This was the break I’d been waiting for since
Geordie Racer
: I was on the first rung of the acting ladder, and it meant I got to do what I did best – show off – and this time for a living.

But Duncan needed one more thing to really make his part come alive, something that wouldn’t arrive till series two. Something, or rather someone, called PJ.

For those of you without an encyclopaedic knowledge of
Byker Grove,
my character, PJ, was a maverick, this kid was a rebel, and it was often said that the Grove was never the same after PJ arrived.