CELEBRITY SQUARES
Freddie Star is one of the celebs who has found it hard to make it work in Spain
CELEBRITY SQUARES
Along with the hundreds of thousands of Brits who’ve flocked onto the Costa del Sol to start a new life in recent years are a handful of celebrities. Two of the most famous are Coronation Street star Bev Callard and outrageous comic Freddie Starr. For some inexplicable reason, they’ve both chosen to live right in the middle of the vast ex-pat community where even a visit to the local supermarket is guaranteed to provoke a few comments.
Bev Callard lives behind tall iron gates in a whitewashed, red-roofed villa, which nestles among citrus trees and palms in one of the Costa del Sol’s best-known resorts. When Bev upped sticks, quit the Street and moved to Spain in 1999, she seemed to be deliberately opting for a stress-free, pressure-free, hassle-free environment well away from the traumas of her stormy, highly publicised private life. Within months of arriving on the Costa del Sol she had adopted the kind of lifestyle that meant her biggest decision of the day was whether to take breakfast on the terrace or by the other side of the swimming pool. Back in those heady, early days in Spain, Bev said, ‘Now this is what I call bliss.’ With a glass of sangria in one hand she added, ‘And that sort of compliment doesn’t come easily for a lass from Leeds, let me tell you.’
Months earlier, Bev, then 41, husband Steve, 34, and their ten-year-old son Josh had packed all their worldy possessions into a lorry and a van and set off for their new life on the Costa del Sol. They didn’t tell anyone they were leaving except their immediate neighbours in Bolton, where they lived, and a few close friends.
For almost a decade, Bev had played the role of desperate wife and manhunter Liz McDonald in Coronation Street. But now not even the neon lights of nearby Marbella could lure the blonde actress out of her quiet little paradise in the sun. She insisted to journalists and friends that she was going to stay put and resist all the obvious Mediterranean temptations. ‘I’m happier now than at any time in my life. This is a new start for us. Some people might think it’s a crazy thing to do to uproot from a comfortable home in England, but we all knew it was right for us. We have had our difficulties, Steve and I. That much is no secret. But now we have a fresh start ahead of us.’
Bev believed that her marriage problems being blasted across countless tabloids had fuelled the cracks in their relationship. Steve had been caught by the papers in a compromising relationship with another woman. There were stories about crockery being thrown and shouting matches, but Bev insisted the opposite was true. ‘There was too much silence between us. We were losing the art of communicating with one another.’
As Bev settled down with husband Steve in Spain, the couple set about lovingly transforming the interior of their new home with a veritable kaleidoscope of pastel shades and an elaborate mural in the stairwell. Along the landing, Bev even had her own special ‘retreat’ – a room that housed her own wall-length wardrobe, mirror and a collection of 250 pairs of shoes. One corner of the downstairs office was also filled with Liz memorabilia. A scarlet stiletto shoe, set on a stone plaque, was a leaving present from the cast of the Street; and hanging in a frame was a tiny scrap of a black Lycra miniskirt, worn by Bev’s character so often in the hit soap show.
So with Bev and her family settling down to a new start, one might have thought that the actress would continue the low profile she said she craved. Meaning every word, she explained at the time, ‘The house is pretty well hidden, so we don’t expect people to be climbing the walls, and we have already checked out the places we can go which the tourists will never find. Anyone has to have times when they are just allowed to be themselves. But in the main, I don’t mind being a celebrity one bit. It’s one part of the job. I enjoyed my years as Liz. I was so proud to be a part of the Street.’
But like most showbusiness stalwarts, Bev soon started to feel the need for some attention. At her favourite restaurant, the Jamaica Inn, curious glances followed her everywhere, but the main thing was that she was being noticed…
Cut to less than a year later. Yet another tabloid headline, this one screaming, ‘Bev Split with Husband Number Three’, seemed to prove that the idyllic life on the Costa del Sol hadn’t quite had the desired effect for Bev Callard. Add to that the fact that Bev had also returned to the Street as a temporary barmaid at the Rover’s Return and it becomes clear that Spain isn’t always the answer to all your problems.
Ironically, friends of the couple told the Sunday Mirror that their life in the sun was to blame for the bust-up. ‘It just highlighted the cracks they had been papering over,’ said one pal. But then, marriage problems were nothing new for Bev Callard. She’d first wed at 16 and had a daughter, Rebecca, who is now in her late 20s and also an actress. Marriage number two was to economics teacher David Sowden. Then along came Steve.
In the middle of all her domestic chaos in Spain, Bev set up an aerobics training school on the Costa del Sol to fill in the gaps between acting jobs. Then, in 2003, she signed for a permanent transfer back to Coronation Street. She’d managed to go full circle in the space of three short years.
These days she still considers her luxury home in Spain to be her main base and divides her time between there and a flat in Kilburn, north London, which is above her daughter Rebecca’s flat. Today she is not so keen on discussing her private life, but she says she’s very happy with her single status and her recently revived run of acting work. Son Josh is at a British boarding school and, with a second series of the TV comedy series Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps about to start shooting, as well as the transfer of a radio comedy show to television and talk of a starring role in a film, she is now busier than ever.
As one of Bev’s closest friends says, ‘She gave it all up to move to Spain and try to save her marriage. It didn’t work, but then that’s the mistake so many people make when it comes to the Costa del Sol. They think that a bit of sun and sangria will make everything OK, but it’s the opposite. When you’re stuck in a house with your husband or wife in a tricky relationship, all the problems are magnified because you haven’t got your usual friends and family around you.’
It’s a lesson to us all.
Freddie Starr’s story is depressingly similar to Bev Callard’s with one big difference: he is still living on the Costa del Sol full time. Back in 1999, Starr quit Britain claiming he had to escape the Child Support Agency after he’d been locked in battle with an ex-lover about maintenance for their three-year-old daughter. He sold his luxury home in Berkshire and his Mercedes, and bought a million-pound villa in the hills behind Torremolinos for himself and wife number three, Donna. So it wasn’t exactly a life of poverty for the comedian whose career peaked in the early-1980s when a now-notorious national newspaper headline proclaimed, ‘Freddie Starr Ate my Hamster’.
By the early-1990s, he had two failed marriages behind him. Then followed a highly publicised affair with his personal assistant and a live-in relationship with a woman called Trudy Coleman, who gave birth to the child that became the focus of the maintenance row when Freddie quit Britain.
Like so many before him, Freddie Star believed that the Costa del Sol would be the answer to all his problems. He’d even blamed his very public bust-up with his child’s mother Trudy as the main reason why he’d fled the UK. One of his closest friends told a journalist at the time, ‘Trudy is very bitter over Freddie and will not let go of this matter. Freddie reckons she can look after herself – his main concern is Donna and their new life together in Spain. He loves the idea that he is going into tax exile.’
But life is never simple with someone as madcap as Freddie Starr, and in the summer of 2002 the Costa del Sol marriage curse struck yet again when Freddie split from Donna. Within weeks, friends were saying that the comedian was on his last legs, a lonely figure chain-smoking, chewing gum and drinking too much coffee in the lounges of hotels near his house.
Life in Spain seemed to have proved a disaster for Freddie. Instead of headline-hitting TV appearances and top-of-the-bill shows, he was now having to make do with the occasional weekend dates in Blackpool and a short, low-budget theatre tour. The divorce from 31-year-old Donna was the last straw, or so it seemed.
As Freddie himself admitted in July 2002, ‘I was not ready for marriage again. I was carrying too much hurt around. We could see it wasn’t working after just three months. Neither of us was capable of giving the marriage a hundred per cent.’ Spain had even had the effect of making Freddie show a rarely acknowledged serious side. ‘I don’t give a toss. I’m giving myself another two years and then I’m retiring. Nothing is for ever.’
Now Freddie was rattling around in his large villa with only statues of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy for company. He rarely swam in the vast pool and never sunbathed. He didn’t drink and he didn’t play golf. But the comedian insisted at the time, ‘I’m happy living by myself. I stay in a lot of the time, working on scripts or watching sport on TV. I lead a very quiet life. I don’t miss the old days when I had a £2 million mansion, owned racehorses, a helicopter and several Rolls Royces. I just look back and think, “What a dickhead!”’
But in the crazy, mixed-up world of Freddie Starr, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Just a year after announcing his divorce from Donna the couple remarried. Freddie told one journalist, ‘I can’t live without her.’
He still lives in Spain, and people who have encountered him since he got back with Donna say he’s a new man. ‘Freddie was sinking fast just like so many older men in Spain whose marriages break up after moving here. But now they’re back together he’s got himself onto a TV series, he’s making stand-up appearances in carefully selected local clubs and bars, and he’s been out socialising again.’
But that same friend warned, ‘Freddie’s probably only got one more chance in life. Out here, the sun and the booze and other influences are a potent mix that so often ends in tragedy. I just hope Freddie has learned his lesson.’