Soul on the Street Read online

  © William Roache, 2007

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use, other than for ‘fair use’ as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual wellbeing. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-8485-0274-1 in print

  ISBN 978-1-84850-787-6 in epub format

  ISBN 978-1-84850-786-9 in Mobipocket format

  To my daughter Edwina

  My fear of death and my fear of infinity caused

  me to seek truth and understanding.

  I am eternally grateful to them.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  Introduction

  I: Death and Infinity

  1: Rutland House

  2: School and War

  3: ‘All That’s Left of the School Dramatic Society…’

  II: Army Dreaming

  4: Training to Kill

  5: Cricket and Fireworks

  6: Arabia

  III: On the Street

  7: An Actor’s Life…

  8: Coronation Street

  9: The Master

  10: Thinking Things Through

  11: Settling Down

  12: Love and Loss

  13: On and Off the Street

  14: The Spiritual Path

  15: The Laws of Life

  16: Moving Forward

  Epilogue

  A Gift of Understanding

  Afterword

  Index

  Plate Section

  About the Author

  Join the Hay House Family

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my wife Sara and all my family for their love, patience and support.

  Lizzie Hutchins for all her hard work in bringing some order to this book.

  Chris Hutchins who instinctively knows the true shape of any work, as a sculptor will look at a piece of stone and see the perfect shape within, for his encouragement and good work.

  All at Hay House for the warmth with which I was welcomed, the understanding and professionalism that I was given and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that you are in the right hands.

  And Dr Thomas Maugham and Peggy Kennard for their guidance and for passing on their great wisdom.

  Preface

  For me the year 2000 was one of momentous personal events. In the February I went to Buckingham Palace to receive my MBE from the Queen and before the year ended my daughter Verity had won her place at St Andrew’s University, where she joined Prince William reading art history.

  But it was an event which did not get into the newspapers for which I remember the year most vividly. Sifting one morning through the pile of letters I get each day from the people who watch Coronation Street, I spotted an envelope addressed in a familiar handwriting. I opened it immediately, anxious to know what the writer had to say this time. I was not disappointed – the letter contained a message from my daughter Edwina. The messenger, whose handwriting I had come to know so well, was the medium Peggy Kennard.

  Edwina – as you will read in greater detail in Chapter 12, Love and Loss – had been taken from us when she was just 18 months old. She had died in her cot at the home my wife Sara and I shared in Sara’s home town of Wilmslow in Cheshire.

  Peggy’s letters were always very special to me. She sent them to my workplace – the Granada Television studios in Manchester. My dressing room there was (and still is) one of my sanctuaries, a place where I can be utterly alone, isolated from the outside world. That and my conservatory at home have long been the grown-up equivalent of the dens I used to build as a child, places where I could be by myself with only my thoughts for company.

  I am a person who can easily be moved to tears on certain occasions and this was one of those. Peggy wrote to tell me that Edwina wanted Sara and me to know that she was well and happy on the other side and busy working as a nurse, helping small children who had died and woken up in the next world crying for their mothers in this.

  I had absolutely no doubt about the validity of the message. Peggy had been writing to me since she saw me discussing spiritual matters on the Sunday morning television programme Heaven & Earth. Astonishing though it may seem in view of our closeness, we never met and I rarely spoke to her on the telephone, but from my study of all things spiritual, I know instinctively when a medium is a good one. Peggy’s messages always carried the sort of information which proved to me that she was special and had a channel to the other side that few could match. She was a wonderful person without a selfish bone in her body or an untruthful thought in her head, and I often discussed my problems in the letters I exchanged with her as she passed on guidance for me from the spirit world, so I was filled with joy when she told me verbatim what my daughter had had to say.

  Edwina had prefaced her message with the words ‘I want to speak to my father whom I know you love’ and she concluded it with the phrase ‘Love, always love’. How moving is that?

  My understanding is that pretty soon after death we reach the full state of being we had before we arrived in this world, so it came as no surprise to me that, despite her tender age when she had passed 16 years earlier, Edwina was now able to operate as what we, on this side, would call an adult.

  My tears welled up as I read the letter again and again before it was time to put it to one side and change into the Coronation Street clothes Wardrobe had laid out for me. Then I became Ken Barlow once again and Bill Roache’s tears had to be dried. A last-minute look at the dressing-room table reminded me to place the wedding ring on my finger (Ken wears one, Bill doesn’t) before I stepped out on to the set, where the likes of Rita Fairclough, Vera and Jack Duckworth, Blanche Hunt and my on-off wife Deirdre were already at their stations in the bar of the Rover’s Return.

  In the 47 years I have been in the show I have hardly ever discussed with my fellow actors the spiritual beliefs which I have laced through this autobiography and which are such an important part of my story. As you will discover, there are huge differences between the real world that I have recorded as honestly as I can on these pages and the world of make-believe that Ken Barlow inhabits. Although more than 20 years have elapsed since she passed, our beloved Edwina is very much a part of what I know to be the real world…

  Introduction

  This is a casual saunter through my life, touching on the events that helped shape my spiritual understanding. I hope it will help people who are searching for meaning in their lives and don’t know where to look. Maybe it will help them forward a little. That’s my hope.

  My early life was overshadowed by two fears, one more understandable than the other, and they were the fears of death and of infinity. It may seem strange, but I am grateful to both of them. It was the fear of death that drove me to search beyond the normal channels for the truth about life after death and it was the fear of infinity that showed me there was more to life than could b
e understood by our finite minds. They were very real fears at the time – the awful dread that one day everything would be over turned me into a hypochondriac at an early age. If I had a bump on my leg it had to be cancer. Nowadays there would be a counsellor for that kind of problem, but back then you sorted yourself out… or not.

  I always felt that I had a mission in life, something that I had to do. I wanted to serve and help people and to do this I needed a better understanding of who we are and why we’re here. For me the greatest question in life was always, What is the purpose of it all?

  I was seeking answers from an early age, but for a long while I was unable to find any that satisfied me. I know that many people find themselves in a similar situation. Nowadays I often get letters from people who don’t know where to turn for information.

  The best place to look is within. Each of us is on an individual journey and each of us will find our own answers. So I always write back and say, ‘As you go to sleep, say to God, or the universe, or your higher self, “Help me to understand.” If you keep repeating that, sooner or later something will cross your path that will give you the answer. It can be anything from a person to a headline, or even just a thought, but you will recognize it when it’s there in front of you.’

  I know that if you ask for understanding, you will get it, because it has happened to me. Sometimes the results have been quite magical.

  I belong to no religion, philosophy or group, but would call myself a seeker for the truth. The views that I am putting forward are mine and my understanding of the great truths. If there is anything in these pages that offends your reason, just leave it. That’s fine. My hope is simply that anyone who is on a similar journey to mine will find this helpful.

  I have now lived quite a long time and I feel I haven’t advanced as far as I should have done. But if you don’t have that feeling, you won’t continue to move forward. It is what drives us on. So I know I will always be searching, always seeking greater knowledge and understanding.

  To further my knowledge I read a lot of esoteric books. I’m really interested in those by teachers from the spiritual realms, people like Silver Birch and White Eagle and books like In Tune with the Infinite. These books are really the only ones I want to read. I could read them all the time; the words are just beautiful. Some of the phrases that have meant a lot to me are scattered throughout this book. Sometimes I have noted their origin; mostly I have not. Often I have taken a phrase and made it my own, changing the words slightly. I often pick out something that strikes me and keep it in my mind throughout the day, almost like a mantra, pondering on it and searching for new insights. A simple little sentence can have so many different meanings at different times. I hope that these words will help you, too.

  My search for the great truths of life remains highly important to me. If we all understood our spiritual nature and what happens after death, it would very much affect, for the better, the way we live our lives, and what could be more important than that?

  Part I

  Death and Infinity

  ‘Where we find ourselves is the place ordained by God.

  We are to be masters of our circumstances.’

  CHAPTER 1

  Rutland House

  ‘A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.’

  Lao Tzu

  There is something mysterious about my arrival in this world: according to my birth certificate, I was born on 25 April 1932, though until I was 18, when the certificate was dug out of a cupboard for a passport application, I always celebrated my birthday on the 23rd. Rather surprisingly, I thought, my parents didn’t remember the date of the big event. I wrote down 25th on the application form but carried on celebrating on the 23rd.

  Whenever it was, I was born in Ilkeston, a small Derbyshire mining town. My grandfather and father were both doctors and it was expected that there would be a third brass plate on the gatepost of Rutland House, which combined the family home with the surgery and waiting rooms of the general practice.

  My grandfather, William, had moved into the house at the end of the nineteenth century and practised there until his early death in the mid-’20s. It was a large early Victorian house set in an extensive garden with two very big marble pillars at the front door. A conservatory was attached to one side of the house and an old cottage to the other. On the ground floor of the cottage there was an ancient well covered by a square flagstone with a metal ring in the centre. As a child, it fascinated me and I was always wanting to look down it. The joke was that this was where the doctors hid their mistakes.

  The conservatory, which had a fruitful grapevine, was also the entrance to the surgery waiting room and provided extra seating on busy nights. My grandfather, who was much loved by his patients, encouraged them to eat the grapes while they were waiting, which they did in grateful moderation. I fear a similar offer made today would result in someone turning up with a supermarket trolley and taking the lot.

  ‘The greatest service we can do for another is to help him to help himself.’

  Although we missed each other by quite a few years, I feel a great affinity with my grandfather. He was a very compassionate man and would often be called out simply to settle a family argument. I remember being told that during the General Strike of 1926 he would visit people and when he left there would be a half-crown, which was quite a lot of money in those days, left on the table for them. That’s the kind of man he was.

  As my father later told me, he also had a profound interest in spiritual matters. He was a Freemason, a hypnotist, a Theosophist, a Spiritualist, a homoeopath and an esotericist with a special interest in Rudolf Steiner. In many ways he was decades ahead of his time. He was what we would now call ‘New Age’. He would spend many evenings with the local vicar, the Reverend Butterton, drinking claret and debating metaphysical matters until the early hours. He gave half of the garden of Rutland House to the Rudolf Steiner Society to build a school. Steiner was an esoteric philosopher with an extraordinary insight into the spiritual realms. He was also a homoeopath and an educationalist with unorthodox views. So Michael House School, built in the classic Steiner style with the minimum of straight lines and corners, became our new neighbour. Steiner believed that schools should be a place of joy. There was no shouting and none of the pupils misbehaved because there was nothing to rebel against.

  My father had no interest or involvement in any of these things and so a generation was skipped. Once when I tried to discuss some spiritual matter with him I remember him saying with some amazement that I was talking just like his father.

  When I was growing up our household consisted of my parents, Vincent and Hester, my sister, Beryl, who was three years older than me, a maid and a doctor who was my father’s assistant. Various other relatives stayed from time to time and we always had a cat and a dog as well.

  Rutland House was an interesting and mainly enjoyable place for a child. The garden was a particular joy, with a beautiful weeping ash tree embracing a swing and a sandpit. My sister and I spent a lot of time there.

  There were also lawns, rockeries, flowerbeds, a kitchen garden, a greenhouse, two garages and a small rough wooded area. We had a gardener, Mr Beardsley, an old red-haired man who always wore a bowler hat.

  I also loved the house itself. My mother used to ask me why, because in her view it was a lot of work. It was hard for her to keep it clean. I remember on washdays she used to get the old tubs out and the mangle, and the maid and my mother would be working away pounding the clothes and hanging everything out to dry. It was hard work.

  The house was also cold – there was no central heating and it was a big house. We had an old hearth and at night firebricks would be laid in it and when the fire died out, we’d each take a firebrick, wrap it in a blanket and take it upstairs to put in our beds to warm them. I used to suffer from leg ache – I’d wake up with my legs aching and my mother would come out and get a hot towel and put it round them. The bedrooms were usually
damp and often the bedclothes were too.

  We cooked on an oven over the fire in the hearth and my mother was always boiling up an old ham bone or making soup out of something. There was always some bit of food being reheated. One Christmas when I was around two or three, the oven door had been left open for a while before the fire was lit and the cat got in. Then the door was closed, the fire was lit and the cat was shut inside. We couldn’t hear it crying. That was awful. It died. I don’t remember the actual event, but I remember being told the story. Everyone was horrified.

  I was born during the Depression, when people often had very little. Mining areas suffered particularly badly at that time. Ours was a middle-class household, but my mother was always quite frugal, always making do. There was no waste, no throwing things away. You repaired everything. You had little segs you could nail into your shoes to prevent them wearing out, leather patches on the elbows of your jackets, and you mended the inner tube of your bike. In short, you learned how to improvise, how to keep things going. You never bought anything new unless you had to. It was a very big change in your life, in fact, when you did.

  My mother herself had had a very tough childhood. She was very artistic and musical and would have loved to have gone to art school or music school, but her father, Albert, who was something of a drinker, would have none of it. Instead she had to work in the family shop in Blackpool from the age of 14. It sold ice cream and sweets, and it was there that she met my father. He was about 16 or 17 at the time and had had rheumatic fever and been sent to Blackpool to convalesce. He used to ride past the shop on his bicycle and he caught my mother’s eye. He never came into the shop, but there was a big lamppost outside with a ledge on it and one day he put a note on it, asking her to meet him on the promenade. She went, taking a friend along as a chaperone, and he gave her a box of chocolates. This romantic gesture didn’t quite work out, though, because she daren’t eat them as she thought they might be drugged! It took several years after the box of chocolates before they started courting properly, but my father used to go back to Blackpool every year to see her. She was very strictly controlled by her parents and she wasn’t really allowed out, but my father was going to be a medical student at St Bartholomew’s in London and so later on her family encouraged the match.