Those early days were hard. One night I’ll never forget. I was in my bedroom by the window. The sky outside was black. It was raining hard. She’d not come back. As I sat there, I began to focus on single drops of rain as they hit the glass. My eyes followed them as they ran down the windowpane. One drop. Then another. Slowly I began to see my reflection and realised that each drop mirrored the tears running down my face. I don’t know how long I sat there — it could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours. If there had been any hope she was coming back, then maybe that night it died. As I got down, I wiped away the mess on my face and said to myself: “I am never going to cry again. Not for her, not for anybody.”
As a child, you’re not equipped to deal to with things like this — especially where I came from. We lived in a small house in a tough, working-class northern neighbourhood in St Helens. No one talked about emotions; you just got on with your life, no matter what you’d been through. What we did have was a father who not only loved us enormously but was determined to keep us together, and in that sense we always felt safe. He was our rock. Dad had lost both his parents when he was a child, so he was determined to fill the space left by our mum. Looking back, he could’ve been a very bitter man about his own parents and his wife, but he wasn’t. He had us and he wanted to keep looking forward.
Dad was a plumber and money was tight. He had strong ethics and a lot of empathy for people worse off than us. If someone couldn’t pay him, he’d come away with something in kind — chickens, a pig, two lambs and 1,000 white mice come to mind. But while he could have us all in stitches, he was also strict — he had to be. He was a man of few words, and if he did say something, you knew he meant it. One thing he was strict about was food. Despite his lack of culinary expertise, he was big on proper meals and lots of greens.
One day, he made this pot of green pea soup. It stank the house out. I sat at the table and I wouldn’t touch it. So he said: “Gary, you’re not moving until you’ve eaten it.” I was starving but I refused. I sat there for hours. He got so frustrated, he said: “If you don’t eat it, you’re going to wear it.” I still wouldn’t budge, so he tipped the whole thing over my head. I was covered from head to toe and ran upstairs to wash it off. When I came back down, he’d put another bowl of soup out. I wasn’t going to win.
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I ended up eating that soup, and you know what, it was absolutely beautiful. The thing was, I couldn’t bear to tell him.
To be honest, I was a handful. I’m sure I drove Dad up the wall. As well as being stubborn, I was an angry child — I had a lot of negativity. He knew he had to take action, but at the same time he recognised where all my anger was coming from; he knew there was a lot of hurt inside. I needed to channel it. And so my dad’s answer was to take me to the local boxing gym and introduce me to Mr Freeman, the trainer. Typically, I refused to get up and take part for ages. But Mr Freeman wasn’t going to give up on me that easily. I think he knew he needed to win my trust, and eventually he did. Once I started hitting that bag, it unleashed something new in me. It not only helped me deal with my own psychological battles, it gave me control and confidence. Boxing is a game of the mind as well as the fists, and it really taught me a lot about myself and other people. One reason why I started to win fights was that I was determined not to let down the people who believed in me — Mr Freeman, my brothers, my dad. I went on to become the British light-middleweight champion.
When I got older and maybe got some of the recognition I’d always craved, I did go back and track my mother down. She hadn’t moved that far away and she’d remarried — as did my dad, eventually. We talked, and although I didn’t feel there was a strong bond, I accept she is my mother and I wish her well. At the same time, I’ve come to value my father more and more. In many ways, I’m a chip off the old block and I’m proud of that. Between my boxing career and my acting career, I’ve met many wealthy and successful people — and they simply couldn’t hold a candle to my old man.
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