Richard Madeley: Stepping into the spotlight alone

6:50am Saturday 11th October 2008

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RICHARD Madeley looked at the state-of-the-art scanner that was going to examine his heart and feared the worst.

He had often worried that he might die before the age of 50 because of a history of heart disease in his family. His father had died of a massive heart attack at 49 and, worried that his fate might be the same, the TV presenter agreed to a state-of-the-art heart test.

"When I agreed to do it, I was thinking, 'Oh, f***', but at least I'll know. The machine didn't come on for a while and then the nurse came in and said, 'Are you all right? Your heart rate's about 170, we thought you were having a heart attack!'"

Once he had calmed down a bit, the test resumed.

"It took about 10 minutes to analyse the results, during which time I was drumming my fingers and wanting a cigarette. The consultant then came in and said, 'You have the heart of a 25-year-old man'. I was so relieved, I thought I'd go out and have a fag! But I resisted temptation."

Now 52, Richard has worn well, looking youthful in white T-shirt, jeans and scuffed Timberland boots. His language is far more colourful than it is on telly.

With homes in highly desirable Hampstead in northwest London, Cornwall and the south of France, Richard and Judy's professional and private partnership has done incredibly well. The couple have survived plenty of knockbacks including Richard being charged with shoplifting in 1991 (he was acquitted), and bitchy pieces focused over the years on Judy's appearance.

On screen, it seems that for much of the time his mouth engages before brain, with Judy regularly berating him for his indiscreet ramblings. Over the years he's talked about everything from the pain of his vasectomy to trying out a Viagra tablet once left over by some guests.

But for all this, Richard is also remarkably eloquent, bright and savvy about what makes a story.

His latest book, Fathers And Sons, covers four generations of Madeley men, starting with his grandfather, Geoffrey, and ending with his son, Jack. It's the first project he's done without Judy for some time.

"I didn't have this crying need to work alone, but it was satisfying to realise that I would do something quite different on my own," he admits.

While some may think it's a tad self-indulgent, the book is a refreshingly good read and features some amazing stories, beginning when his grandfather, at the age of 10, was abandoned by his family who emigrated to Canada, leaving him to help on his uncle's farm.

Later, because of a series of personal setbacks, Geoffrey simply withdrew emotionally from his own wife and children.

As a result, Richard's father, Chris, grew up in a household devoid of physical or emotional warmth. There were no hugs, no tactile gestures, no embraces. When Chris fell in love with Richard's mother, Mary Claire, his views were transformed on meeting her family in Canada, for whom physical and emotional love was all around.

Determined not to emulate his father's emotional detachment, Chris, who began his career as a journalist and then became a PR for Ford, set about making his own Madeley family home a place brimming with hugs, kisses and closeness.

He was born in Essex, a happy lad in a happy family. But there were dark periods, particularly when he was around the age of eight and his father started to beat him spasmodically, for little or no reason.

It happened between 15 and 20 times over a two-year period, Richard recalls. There was a pattern. His father would go to the garden shed, get a bamboo cane and beat him on the legs, back and arms.

"It was a symptom of how some of the damage that he'd managed to stop flowing into our lives had got through. I think it was pure anger, not with me but with his past.

"At some level, he must have resented not being loved as a child. Although he dealt with it quite efficiently, there was an untapped well of anger which was pure animal instinct."

The beatings ended when, as a result of one particularly violent episode, Richard wasn't able to go to school the next day because he had PE, which would have revealed the weals all over his body.

Until then, Richard says his mother had been unaware of how hard her son was being hit and that the canings usually took place when she was not in the house.

On the last occasion she threatened to go to the police and to leave Chris if the beatings didn't stop.

He apologised profusely to Richard and promised never to beat him again - and that was that.

"It stopped because he realised he'd gone too far. Suddenly he was confronted by the consequences of what he was doing.

"But out of this bad place came something good. I knew that if he promised to change his behaviour, he would. And he did. It made me respect him."

Richard says he hasn't inherited his father's anger and has never beaten his children, Jack, Chloe, or his stepchildren, twins Tom and Dan, although he admits he has a short fuse.

"I'm quite hot-headed. If I trip up or bang my head, I'll be annoyed. What makes me angry? The conspiracy of inanimate objects, like when you open a car door and bang your shin. But I'm fairly level headed and calm with my family."

When his father died suddenly of a heart attack, Richard was on honeymoon with his first wife, Lynda. His mother told him the terrible news on the phone and he recalls: "It sounded like I'd been told the worst lie anyone could ever tell you. It seemed so improbable. I'd only seen him two days before. It was utterly traumatic and such a shock. I was only 21. I had so much to ask him."

He threw himself into work and used it to escape his grief, propelling him to further ambitions. After his first marriage collapsed he met Judy, eight years his senior, on the news programme Granada Reports in Manchester. Their chemistry worked as well off-screen as on and they've been married for 21 years.

He soon formed an easy relationship with her twins from her first marriage and happily became their stepfather.

"I've taken from my father the importance of telling your children that you love them, and never be embarrassed about it, the importance of full physical contact - playing, tickling, holding hands. Jack, who's 22, is taller than me now and still leans forward for a hug when he comes in.

"I've probably inherited my dad's short temper but with me it's a firecracker going off, with dad it was a stick of gelignite."

Fathers And Sons by Richard Madeley is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £18.99.