When Scott Mitchell recalls the moment he met Dame Barbara Windsor, he says, “She was this little ball of prettiness.” For the smitten young actor, it was the beginning of a love story that would endure for the next 27 years until the much-loved actress passed away on December 10, 2020, aged 83.
He smiles, “I was 29 and she was 56, but she was very young-looking, with this vibrance and vitality. There was something so special about her." In his candid new memoir, By Your Side, My Life Loving Barbara Windsor, he reveals details of their life together.
He says, “It is both a tribute and a love letter. Before the dementia, she said to me: ‘They will ask you to do a book, sweetheart; please be honest’.”
Looking back to their first meeting, he says, “When our worlds collided it was like no one else mattered. We really were soulmates. We both knew we had this incredible love and a shared connection.”
He looks wistful, “I adored her and I miss her so much. I saved a jumper of hers and there is the scent of her perfume, Shalimar. Every now and again I just go to the wardrobe and smell it, and hold it.”
Barbara's dementia diagnosis
Scott (59) proved his devotion to Bar – as he called her – in the unstinting way he cared for his wife when she was given her devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer's in 2014.
“After the consultant told us, she looked at me and said, ‘I’m so sorry Scott’. I said: ‘Don’t ever be sorry’. I started grieving there and then.”
Initially they kept it private, but went public in 2018 when it became difficult to hide her symptoms. A team of dementia support team and carers helped in the final two years of Barbara’s life, and she moved into a care home for the last five months. Scott says shakily, “It was possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I couldn’t cope anymore.”
But despite the heartache, the couple were playful together. He says, “From the day we met until the day she passed, we never stopped talking. However grim things were around us, we always found a way to laugh. We were always laughing.”
Barbara's marriages and how she met Scott
Scott was a jobbing actor when the couple first met. Barbara had been on stage since she was 13 and was a friend of his mother’s.
The actress was unhappily married to her second husband, pub owner Stephen Hollings, after a disastrous 22-year first marriage to Ronnie Knight, a friend of the Kray brothers.
Scott was visiting his parents in Sussex and was unwillingly dispatched to collect Barbara from London to bring her back to their house for dinner. He remembers,
“Within weeks of that first meeting, we couldn’t bear to be apart. Barbara divorced her husband and we moved to central London.”
They were married in 2000 and he still lives in their shared home today, finding comfort in the memorabilia of their happy life together. But in the early years of their relationship, they had to endure sceptical comments about their 27-year age difference and jibes that Scott was a gold digger.
He says, “We understood it. It brought us closer together and in time, we were accepted as a couple.”
Life with Barbara was never boring
Ironically, when they met, Barbara’s career was in the doldrums, and then her husband’s pub collapsed and left her £1 million in debt. But that changed when she was cast as Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders in 1994, a role she played for 20 years.
Scott laughs, “Walking down the street with her was like being with Tinkerbell. Everyone would spot her and some called out Peggy’s famous catchphrase: ‘Get out of my pub!’ It was constant.”
One of her proudest moments was receiving her MBE from Queen Elizabeth II in 2000 and then a Damehood in 2016. “Barbara was a massive royalist and when The Queen visited Albert Square, she showed her around like it was a market stall!”
As Barbara’s dementia progressed, being her carer was tough. He admits, “Sometimes she would ask me something and after explaining it 20 times, I could get impatient and tut, but I would always feel this terrible remorse afterwards. It is the most cruel disease for loved ones to watch.”
He gets tearful as he recalls her final days in the north London nursing home. “I slept by her bed in a reclining chair. But after five nights, the staff insisted I get some proper sleep in a spare bed on the first floor. I kissed her goodnight, went upstairs and fell into a deep sleep. Half an hour later I was woken by a knock at the door and she had gone. But she had such a wonderful life.”
Over the last two years, Scott has fund-raised for dementia research, running the London Marathon twice. He says, “I feel so blessed I crossed paths with Barbara. Our life was a rollercoaster but nothing better could have happened to me.”
