EASTENDERS legend Barbara Windsor was devoted to her husband Scott Mitchell – and despite their 27-year age gap, they were a perfect match.
Babs was married three times. First to gangster Ronnie Knight then pub landlord Stephen Hollings.
Scott Mitchell says Barbara Windsor was up front with him about her past conquests
Scott says the couple’s 27-year age difference did not hold them back
She also had flings with Reggie Kray and his brother Charlie, footballer George Best, Bee Gee Maurice Gibb and fellow Carry On star Sid James.
On December 10, 2020, Barbara died aged 83 after a six-year battle with Alzheimer’s.
Here, in exclusive extracts from his new book By Your Side: My Life Loving Barbara Windsor, Scott reveals the ups and downs of their extraordinary 27-year marriage.
BARBARA and I were in our little mews house when she reached for my hand and fixed me with her piercing green eyes.
She said: “One day, Scott darlin’, when I’m no longer around, they will ask you to write a book about us.”
I found myself shaking my head. Barbara was nearly 30 years older than me, we’d been together for a quarter of a century at the time and were trying to come to terms with the cruel diagnosis that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Over the years I had seen this bright, bubbly little lady dust herself off so many times.
Perhaps I had convinced myself she was invincible. But she knew otherwise.
She continued: “Be honest. Otherwise there is no point.”
Honesty was vitally important to Bar and had been since we’d first met.
I had asked her many times why she had always been so candid in her books and interviews.
“It’s who I am, Scott,” she would say. “I’m the one who has to look in the mirror and own who I am.
ALL I COULD DO IS CRY
“There will be people who like me and people who don’t, but at least I know I’ve been true to myself.”
On only our second date Bar had talked to me in detail about her many, many conquests.
She said it was always good to brush the cobwebs away.
Ours was not an open relationship, but it wasn’t a closed book either.
Bar didn’t want to stop me living my life to the full, as she had, but it did start to get a bit mixed up.
She had always said sex was sex and love was love, and she wasn’t one for double standards, so she kept her reservations to herself and never asked me directly.
I just wanted to keep the party going — and that meant drugs and alcohol.
A lunch at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel with Gillian Taylforth and Mike Reid, both EastEnders legends, carried on late into the night when we were joined by Paul O’Grady and Mark Little.
Scott says partying with Barbara was wild and often went on into the early hours
Barbara was previously married to Ronnie Knight (left), an associate of Reggie Kray (right) and his twin brother Ronnie
Bar could generally match me drink for drink. But she was even littler than me and at some point her eyes would start to roll into the back of her head. That was the moment to call it a night.
I took her home, poured myself another drink, then after a while decided it would be more fun to go back out and score some coke. Bar was out cold, so why shouldn’t I?
It was just a bit of fun. A one-off. Quite quickly this one-off became something that happened every couple of weeks.
She would say: “Go back out. Enjoy yourself”.
So I’d take her home then ask the cabbie to turn around and head back to the West End.
It wasn’t to hook up with women, though we both had a similar attitude towards sex, but to score some coke.
Bar was laid-back, but she wasn’t slapping me on the back either.
“I’m cool, Scott, but don’t take the p***,” she said, when I stayed out until dawn.
They say you have to hit rock bottom before you can rebuild.
I hurtled downwards and smacked into rock bottom with soul-shattering force.
I was well into a two-day bender when a voicemail came through on my phone from gangster Freddie Foreman’s son Jamie, “Scott. Phone me.”
Great, someone to party with, I thought, and immediately called him back.
Jamie was very angry: “You called my house last night and left me a totally inappropriate and foul-mouthed voicemail.
“My partner and kids heard it. I should come over and clump you.”
I looked, wild-eyed, at Bar. I had no recollection of any of it.
No sane man would take on Jamie, so I must be insane. “Help me,” I wept.
Jamie’s phone call saved my marriage — and my life.
Throughout all of Bar’s illness I’d managed not to drink. I am now 20 years sober and Jamie, the man who started my recovery, is still a friend.
Our lives were going to be changed for ever at 5pm on 22 April, 2014.
That was the day Bar’s brilliant neurologist Dr Angus Kennedy told us: “It’s Alzheimer’s.”
Barbara burst into tears, but almost immediately inhaled them back in and reached over with her little hand.
She looked at me and said: “I’m sorry, Scott.”
Eight days after the diagnosis I made an appointment to see Dr Kennedy alone. I had so many questions, but when I sat down opposite him all I could do was cry.
“I’m scared that one day she won’t know who she is or what she’s achieved,” I told him.
Gradually, as Babs’ condition deteriorated, her long working life came to an end filming a final bingo advert in 2017.
I wouldn’t let her be seen struggling after a career of always being the ultimate professional. I needn’t have worried. She did her last scenes perfectly.
Scott says he did not want Barbara to be seen to be suffering with her health
As we headed home, she said: “I’m worried about you, as a man. We don’t have a sex life any more.”
I was a bit taken aback: “Please, Bar, don’t you worry about any of that.”
“It’s not right because you’re still a young man,” she said.
I was 54, so not that young, but I guess it’s relative.
I replied: “Please, Bar, let’s not talk about this.” “No, Scott. You must do what you have to do. Just please never leave me.”
That was so Bar. Even at 80.
By the autumn of 2020 Barbara was in a care home when a carer told me: “You need to be strong now. And remember, her hearing will be the last thing to go. Just talk to her, she can hear you.”
The enormity of it made me weep, but I took my place in Bar’s room, by her side, and started to talk to her as she drifted in and out of sleep.
“We were so lucky, Bar, so lucky to have met,” I told her. “We’ve had the greatest love two people could hope to have.
“The bloody wonderful, amazing, ground-breaking, hard-working, exciting life you’ve led. I’m in awe. I’ve always been in awe . . . ”
Amy did lines… of TV script
ONE day in the summer of 2010 I looked out of the upstairs window and saw a very thin girl with exceptionally dark hair sitting on the steps of the house opposite.
Barbara came up the stairs and said: “Scott, I think Amy Winehouse is outside.”
Barbara struck up a brief friendship with Amy Winehouse and enjoyed her company
We’d never met her before, but when we opened the front door she looked as if she knew we were going to open it.
Amy got up off the steps, walked over, hugged us both and said: “I’ve just checked myself into the London Clinic. I’ve been overdoing it a bit.”
Bar said: “Come and have a cup of tea.”
Linking arms with Bar, Amy said: “You remind me of my nan, Cynthia. I really miss her.”
She became a regular visitor to our house after that. I think, I hope, that’s because she felt safe there.
Whenever she came, I’d make tea and she would offer to help Bar learn her lines.
Amy would ask: “Can I be Peggy now?”
“Sure, darlin’, you’d make a good landlady.”
Just over a year later, on July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse was found dead at her home.
The kind, talented, sweet girl we had got to know would never arrive unannounced at our door again.
- ©Scott Mitchell. Adapted by MIKE RIDLEY from By Your Side: My Life Loving Barbara Windsor, by Scott Mitchell. Published by Seven Dials on October 13, price £20 in hardback. Also available in ebook and audio.
Scott Mitchell’s book By Your Side: My Life Loving Barbara Windsor is out on October 13
