Soul on the Street

by William Roache

  Halfway through, there was an interval and I went out to ask where the loo was. Sara told me, and as she did so, she brushed some fluff off my jacket. That was all, but as I was walking away it suddenly came to her that she was going to marry me. Somehow she just knew it. Now I say, ‘Well, you never warned me, did you?’ I have since learned that her intuition is very powerful. In particular her feelings about people on first meeting are very rarely wrong.

  That night we got to know each other at the party afterwards, and it went on from there. At the time I had come to the end of one marriage and had no thoughts of remarrying at all. Nevertheless we did get wed five years later, in 1978. It was a very quiet registry office ceremony as neither of us wanted any fuss. I simply took the day off from Coronation Street and kept the arrangements very quiet. It has proved to be a wonderful marriage and nearly thirty years on Sara and I are one of showbusiness’s most enduring couples.

  ‘Where hangs the key to the mysteries of heaven? It hangs in the heart.’

  There are things that you suddenly feel are right. You don’t really know why, but you are completely comfortable with them. This was how it felt with Sara. It might be an example of an agreement made before incarnation. I don’t know. Perhaps, without really knowing it, I had developed enough to be ready for a different kind of relationship. Whatever the case, I was now totally satisfied with married life and didn’t feel the need to look elsewhere. All my restlessness had vanished and I was more than happy to settle down. It was such a relief.

  Sara had been involved with acting herself, so she knew how everything worked, and she certainly wasn’t awestruck by the fact that I was on national television. She simply took it all in her stride. I was a little miffed, though, to learn that when Coronation Street had started she had fancied my brother, Alan Rothwell, not me!

  I was still with Coronation Street, of course, though there were times when I was about 40 when I wondered whether I should be getting out. I hadn’t ever made a conscious decision to stay with it – it had just been a year at a time. There had been a couple of occasions when we had been on three-year contracts, but generally the contract was for one year, and that’s generally what it is now. You expect to be offered a new contract, but you might not be. When you hear that Coronation Street actors are ‘sacked’, technically they’re not. It’s just that their contracts haven’t been renewed. Anyway, I thought things through and stayed with it – a year at a time. I like to think I am no different from anyone else in the cast but occasionally I get a little reminder that in some respects perhaps I am: at the height of an emotional scene with Deirdre quite recently, I couldn’t think of a key word and let out an expletive. ‘Blimey,’ said the sound guy, ‘that was like hearing your grandmother swear!’

  Life is always moving on, but I’ve always been one who likes to hang on to things. I’d like a good strong car that would last forever. I’d like a good strong house. But nothing is permanent. It’s taken me a while to realize this. I’ve always been looking for permanence. So it is not surprising that I am in the most permanent form of employment a very uncertain profession has to offer.

  I have had the good strong house too, or rather bungalow. After living for six or seven years in the cottage at Rawtenstall I bought two cottages nearby, together with nearly an acre of land. I renovated one, sold the other and built a bungalow on the land. It had three-fifths of an acre of garden which I planted with apple trees. Sara and I lived there for several years and were very happy there.

  By this time Dr Maugham had died, but he had left me a wonderful spiritual legacy. When he died, I carried on – as he said, you should follow your interests.

  One thing Dr Maugham taught us, which remained with me, was the importance of thought. We tend to think that a thought is just a thought, but it is an energy. It goes out, has an effect and then returns, loaded up with whatever its content was. So you get back what you give out. All your good thoughts will return with good energy and all your bad thoughts will return to harm you. So it is better to send out good thoughts, if only for self-preservation! Most of our thoughts are muddled, chaotic and half-baked, so it’s no wonder that we’re living in a messy jumble of semi-darkness instead of a beautiful, clear, loving world.

  As I continued my development I became more aware of the power of thought. Nowadays, if I am ever with a large group of noisy people and am beginning to think unkind thoughts about them, I will remind myself that we are all eternal beings on a journey and will bring to mind a wonderful thought: ‘Dear everyone, I love you all.’ Immediately I will feel relaxed. The people and the noise may be the same, but by changing my thoughts, I have changed my response.

  We can do this all the time. We can’t always change what happens to us, but we can change how we react. This fundamental truth can work miracles. Try it. If someone is being really horrible to you, first forgive them and then send them loving thoughts. You will be astounded how often the situation changes completely.

  As I continued to explore spiritually, something wonderful happened to me – my fears of death and infinity started to diminish. Once my mind was opened up and I realized that although there was more to life than I could see and hear and feel and touch, that was fine, the fear began to subside. Infinity seemed far less threatening. And when I was taught that we were eternal beings and were all infinitely loved, ‘infinite’ became a good word, an exciting word. Infinity was a wonderful thing.

  ‘God is the spirit of infinite love.’

  Realizing that there was life after death also helped me tremendously. Once you realize that, the fear of death goes totally. Now I’m really looking forward to death, though I don’t like the idea of actually dying. But even that is alleviated by the fact that you know that it is a great release and that you’re going home.

  I once saw how wonderful death could be. I knew an army officer in London and met his mother a couple of times. She was a nice old dear. One day when I rang my friend and asked how she was, he said, ‘Oh, I’m afraid she’s in hospital. She’s dying.’ I went to see her and she was lying back with her eyes closed. I just sat down beside her and suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at me and said, ‘Hello.’ That was all, but it was the most beautiful look. It said, ‘You don’t feel sorry for me, do you?’ And she herself was radiant. She died that evening.

  Later on I saw the same thing with my father. The night he died, my mother and sister and I were sitting with him and my sister was holding one of his hands and I was holding the other. Without a word, he looked from one of us to the other and his eyes looked big and childlike and really quite beautiful. And he died not long after that.

  As my fears were subsiding, I was continuing to grow in awareness. I realized that in order to learn the great truths, the lower self has to be tamed and overcome. This is symbolized by St George and the dragon, the dragon representing the passions of the lower self. The lower self will argue, fight, kill and do all sorts of other awful things, but the spiritual self just wants to love everybody. If we could all just allow our spiritual selves to shine through, all the problems of the world would be solved. We wouldn’t even need the Earth anymore as a school.

  ‘Through God’s wisdom we are taught and guided, but never punished.’

  In the meantime, though, we all have to tame the lower self. It is a slow process and cannot be rushed, but through self-improvement on the one hand and daily meditation on the other we slowly move onwards and upwards. There is reading and learning to be done and gentle self-discipline. Gentle self-discipline is better than harsh measures, as the lower self is overcome by releasing the peace and love in the heart region and this is a process of letting go and cannot be forced.

  Essentially, all we have to do is let love shine out through every aspect of our being and eventually radiate out to others through love and service. This is easily said, of course, but the lower self will hang on and fight for its own survival. At the beginning I saw this as a battle and it caused me a lot of i
nner turmoil. I felt angry and frustrated. Then I learned the big lesson, that love conquers all. If we love the lower self, it ceases to dominate. So don’t despise the lower self, just love it and rise above it.

  Becoming aware is the first step. If you just observe your behaviour, as Dr Maugham taught us, you may notice that your language is a little coarser than it should be or that you enjoy criticizing people too much. Don’t be discouraged – the fact that you have noticed these traits is the first sign of your rising awareness. The next step is to modify these things whenever you can, without despairing when they do happen. Gradually they will be eliminated and you will become aware of other negative traits to work on. You are on your way.

  Once you become more aware, you will find that your higher self is able to come through more clearly and help you in all aspects of your life. In the beginning it can only contact you through inspiration, intuition and dreams. For this reason, intuition is always to be relied upon more than reason. How many times, against all the odds, has a woman’s intuition proved to be right? Look at my experience with Sara when she said she knew we were going to be married. Similarly, when you have a bright idea that affects the direction of your life, where did that come from? Then there are those dreams that seem more real than the others – like the one I had in which Dr Maugham appeared so dramatically – and bring with them a feeling that stays with you all day. All these are ways in which your higher self is making contact.

  ‘All that is necessary to contact the divine is the thought, “God hold me, God keep me.”’

  We also have spiritual guides and helpers trying to impress on our minds the thoughts that will lead us in the right direction. As I understand it, we all have a major spiritual guide. Some people call it a guardian angel. Whatever term you choose, it is a being who is really looking out for us. We usually also have spirit friends helping us, people we knew in other incarnations. They have chosen to do this work. Like the higher self, they may communicate with us through dreams, sudden ideas, ‘chance’ meetings or something we read in a book. All the time we’re being influenced and aided by loving spiritual guides.

  Over time I have come to recognize the influence of my guide in my life more and more, and at times I can even feel its presence. It’s a wonderful warm glow. I can’t identify the particular individual, but then I don’t need to. It’s definitely a loving presence and that’s all I need to know. Of course I’d love to be able to say, ‘It’s so-and-so. Oh, hello, how are you?’ I have met mediums who know their guides personally and that’s a really nice relationship to have. But just to know that your guide is there is a lovely feeling. Everyone, without exception, has one and I am grateful that I have been made so acutely aware of that.

  It has been fairly late in life that I have become aware of this, but looking back I can see there were many moments when I had feelings or ideas that definitely came from my guide. As we develop spiritually this process becomes clearer and more frequent, and if we consciously choose to be receptive, it can become an open contact. Ultimately, when we have awakened completely, there is direct communication. This is the true meaning of being born again. The first birth is natural; the second is spiritual.

  This is a path that we are all treading, consciously or unconsciously. Those who are not aware are nudged and directed by their life’s experiences. Those who become aware can learn in a more conscious and controlled way. Ultimately, the whole purpose of life is to bring us to the realization of our oneness with infinite love, to unfold ourselves spiritually.

  ‘Every soul has to find reality at some time. The task can be delayed, but it cannot be averted forever.’

  For now, if you wish to experience the presence of your guardian angel, if you open yourself to it and ask for it, it will happen. It might not happen in the way that you think it will, but it will happen all the same. Your angel will make itself known.

  While I was doing this inner work, on an outer level life was also opening out. Sara was a good actress and I wanted to branch out a little and produce some plays, so we set up a production company together, William Roache Productions. Vin Sumner, the manager of the Charter Theatre at the Guildhall in Preston, was very encouraging and we produced four plays there. The first was Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit. I was the lead and Sara played my wife. Everything went well, though on the first night I was so nervous that my hand shook violently as I was handing over some drinks on stage. It wasn’t until we were rehearsing the second play, André Roussin’s The Little Hut, a comedy about three people who are shipwrecked on a desert island, that the dreaded giggles struck. At one point Brian Mosley, who played Alf Roberts in Coronation Street, the director Diana Harker and I were all absolutely helpless with laughter.

  Obviously this sort of thing is a real disadvantage to an actor. I’m afraid I have always found it very difficult to control and at one time I was afraid I’d have to give up acting altogether because of it. Now I have developed a technique of turning away and thinking of something serious, but it’s not always easy. On Coronation Street Eileen Derbyshire, who plays Emily Bishop, is also prone to fits of giggles, and if we have a tense or dramatic scene together and something sets us off, it can be very tricky to manage. Still, apparently Olivier was a giggler too, so it can happen to the best of actors.

  The Little Hut turned out well in the end, but we used six tons of sand to get an authentic desert island effect and they were still trying to get rid of it years later.

  After that we did another couple of shows at Preston, Flip Side, a farce by Margaret Williams and Hugh Steadman Williams, and Alan Ayckbourn’s Time and Time Again. We broke even with all of them, and for a new company without a subsidy and in a theatre without a regular audience, I thought that was pretty good. All the while I was on stage in the evenings I was still filming Coronation Street by day, though, and it was an exhausting schedule. It would have been impossible to keep up for long.

  Next we produced two Sunday-night chat shows introduced by Gordon Burns. The first had Cliff Richard – whom I know well – as a guest and the second had the wonderful Frankie Vaughan. Cliff revealed that he was a great fan of Coronation Street and that after Minnie Caldwell called him ‘that chubby Cliff Richard’ in 1964, he adopted a sensible diet to which he has adhered ever since.

  Producing shows was an education for me. For the first time I really became aware of all the responsibilities and pressures faced by management. I also grew to hate auditioning actors – particularly as I wanted to give everyone the part! As time went on I learned that actors who read well at audition might not do so well on stage and it’s always best to see them work if you can.

  The production company had been a fascinating experience, but we simply didn’t have the time to devote to it, and it was almost with relief that I went back to ‘just’ playing Ken on Coronation Street.

  In 1981 Sara gave birth to our first daughter, Verity, and we needed more room, so we moved to Sykeside House, a Victorian former mill owner’s house nearby. This was a beautiful three-storey mansion of honey-coloured stone with a lovely old garden and two-and-a-half acres of land. There was a weeping ash in the front drive which reminded me of the one at Rutland House and I always felt very at home there.

  I still had the tendency to try to do things for myself, even if I didn’t have the required expertise, and when we moved I decided to do the conveyancing myself. If both houses had been registered and there hadn’t been any boundary problems this would have been straightforward; unfortunately, everything was far more complicated than I had envisaged. Then, as if all this wasn’t enough, the man buying my bungalow died. At that, I gave up and brought in a solicitor. Sometimes you have to recognize when you have taken on too much. It was a useful lesson.

  We weren’t at Sykeside House long, though, before we decided to leave, as there were no schools nearby, and move to Wilmslow, Sara’s birthplace. She was keen to move back there. Her parents were still living there and it was delightful to be so cl
ose to them. In April 1983 our second daughter, Edwina, was born. I was working at Granada and although it was only a 20-minute journey from the studios to the Davy Hume Hospital where Sara was giving birth, the birth was so quick that I almost didn’t make it. It was, I remember, a lovely sunny day, so suitable for the arrival of such a beautiful child whom we affectionately nicknamed Teddy. There was, of course, no inkling of the sad, sad event that was to occur the following year.

  All the while, fame was opening doors. I had been invited to join the Variety Club Golf Society and really enjoyed taking part in their tournaments. A celebrity and a professional would play with two amateurs, who paid to do so, which was how they raised money for charity. Lots of celebrities also had their own golf tournaments and I was delighted to become part of the circuit. Since then I’ve also played in pro-celebrity tournaments on television. I found that golf can be like meditation in that you have to harmonize your body, mind and emotions. In fact I found that meditating actually improved my golf!

  Thinking about fame, it seems to me that there are three stages of it. The first is when it’s new. That’s all very nice. You enjoy all the attention. But then suddenly you go into the next phase and realize that once you’re known, you can’t become unknown. For the first time you learn how restrictive it can be. You can’t go incognito anywhere and if you’re doing anything wrong, the press are going to be on it in a minute. This can get quite frightening and claustrophobic, because you feel you can’t get away from it. Some people suffer quite badly. For those who have fame very briefly or who court it and then suddenly don’t want it, it can be a particularly difficult thing.

  Once you’ve had the time to adjust, however, you simply learn to live with it. That’s the phase that I’m in now. I know I’m no better or no worse than anybody else just because I’m famous. I have a job that exposes me to the public and that’s it. There are advantages and there are disadvantages, but I would say the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.