The woman TV’s Paul Whitehouse saved from her brutal drug dealer father...
...And here she reveals how their love led to a very unusual family life for The Fast Show star
PAUL Whitehouse is a genius at writing and playing troubled men: the angry, lonely, deluded and foolish all stumble from the pages of his scripts. His insights – always hilarious, often humane – have made him one of the best loved comedians for a quarter of a century.
Yet there is one role he does not discuss: the one he plays offscreen as the long-term partner of a woman with a troubled past, more than 20 years his junior.
The 58-year-old star has been with academic Mine Conkbayir, 36, for more than a decade. They met when she was 23, a student, and working in a shop.
They have a four-year-old daughter, Delilah, but are not married and do not share a home, preferring to live close to one another in North London. It’s unconventional, perhaps, but Mine today reveals how Whitehouse’s love and support have helped her escape her early years to build a flourishing career.
She reveals that Whitehouse wears a white gold commitment ring engraved with the words ‘I love you, Barn’. ‘It’s short for barnacle,’ she laughs, ‘because we cling together.’
Theirs is the rarest of showbusiness love stories: age-gap relationships between devoted fans and household name entertainers don’t often survive. Yet this has been the least of the problems they have faced in their 13 years together.
For Mine endured a horrific childhood at the hands of her violent, drug-dealer father. He would threaten to stab her mother, hurl his daughter’s toys from their council flat balcony, and openly snort his ‘Superman powder’ – cocaine. The drugs and violence inside their home were matched by discarded syringes and gluesniffing paraphernalia outside.
‘Chalk lines from murders seemed to be a weekly occurrence on our estate,’ Mine says. ‘My upbringing was basically nuts. And there was carnage when my dad was around.’
Refusing to be held hostage by her past, Mine has instead deployed it in pursuit of an academic career and is now a leading name in the field of brain development in babies and small children. She has a special interest in the impact of abuse, neglect and trauma.
It’s all been achieved with Whitehouse by her side. The man who created kebab shop owner Stavros, Essex boy Loadsamoney and DJs Smashie and Nicey has, she says, given her the stability she needed to succeed.
‘I am a damaged person so Paul does all he can to keep me level. He has seen me at my worst and is wholeheartedly supportive. He is always positive and calm, patient and tender when I am at my lowest. He loves my work. He knows that my anxiety, my doubts and despair, all those toxic things, could seep into it and he cares for me and keeps me calm.
‘I am a volatile, passionate, angry individual. My dial is always cranked up. When I have an outburst sometimes, he says nothing. He just pauses, takes a deep breath, and sometimes he hums. I say, “Are you zoning me out, Paul?” but he’s not being rude, it’s his coping mechanism. He has not had it easy either. He is not from a conventional RADA or acting school background.’
Today, Whitehouse is a Bafta winning comedian and favourite of Hollywood director Tim Burton. He began his comic partnership with Harry Enfield more than 25 years ago but it was The Fast Show, the cult 1990s sketch show, which made him a superstar. Characters such as football pundit Ron Manager, sexist car shark Swiss Toni and the saucy ‘Suits you, Sir’ tailors remain popular two decades after they first appeared on TV. His range goes well beyond amusing sketches, however, embracing midlife crisis in drama series Happiness and mental health in Nurse. By the time his marriage to his wife Fiona broke up in 2000, Whitehouse was already wealthy and well known. Mine was a fan; she treasured an autograph her mother brought home after bumping into the star in a supermarket when she was 15.
It was a few years later when they actually met. Mine was working in a health food shop in Islington as she studied for her degree. She says: ‘Paul used to come in regularly. I’d try to act unfazed but inside I was bursting. I would buy tickets for his shows and he’d promise to get me backstage. There was a bit of banter between us and then a few dates.’
They went out for dinner and Mine took Whitehouse to an art gallery. She also got him to come to her college for a fundraising event. It was a slow-burn relationship. She remembers: ‘Paul was understandably scared because of the age gap and his celebrity status – I guess he had to ask himself what I really wanted.’
What Mine wanted was not a gilt-edged invitation to join Whitehouse on the red carpet but a boyfriend who could cope with the traumatic legacy of her childhood.
Paul does all he can to keep me level. He has seen me at my worst
Mine’s Turkish father had been a minicab driver, the perfect front for his heroin dealing. Her mother held down three factory jobs to support the family during his frequent absences. Home was a cockroach-infested block of flats in East London, the threat of violence a constant. ‘I still remember one day bouncing up and down on the bed asking to go to Thorpe Park and my dad threatened to knife Mum if she didn’t shut me up,’ she says.
‘Another time, I was playing with a toy baby buggy when he thought I should be doing something else. He threw it off the balcony three storeys up. His presence represented tumult and anxiety and chaos and violence. I was always ready to duck. His relationship with my mum was volatile. She once tried to escape by jumping off the balcony as he tried to smash the front door.
‘My mum gave me an abundance of love but I was permanently programmed for fight or flight and I developed obsessive compulsive disorder.’
Her parents frequently split up and her father would return for contact visits.
‘I used to really look forward to it because he’d take me to play football. But sometimes he’d turn up drunk.’
When Mine was 10, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his part in a heroin sting. He served six years before being released and deported to Turkey. It gave his daughter a period of calm and after a false start studying to be a teacher, she developed her interest in early years education.
Today, she is completing her PhD in early childhood education and neuroscience, and has a book out this month on how brain patterns laid down in a child’s first three years govern their adult life. Soon Mine hopes to become a professor in this area – she is already acknowledged as an expert and is in demand as a lecturer.
Back in Turkey, her father has now gone straight and the pair are at least on speaking terms. But their rapprochement cannot solve the problem of her childhood. Last week, she suffered a panic attack which kept her housebound for two days.
Whitehouse would like her to have further therapy – she’s been on and off the couch since she was 14 – but she’s reluctant, believing she will always be a work in progress. Interestingly, Whitehouse himself has sought help from a therapist. ‘I don’t want to go into my own situation but I think pretty well everyone has in this day and age, haven’t they?’ he said in 2015.
These days, Mine has a privileged position as his earliest audience: ‘I love to listen to Paul’s ideas and I make suggestions which he sometimes takes on board. The most important bit is to be his sounding board as it helps him think through his ideas.’
Although clearly committed, they have no plans to marry or move in together. Mine says: ‘Paul needs time when he is writing and I find it soothing to live with just Delilah. We were watching TV the other night and there was a show with a traditional 2.4 children family and I said to Paul, “Partly it annoys me and partly I think, oh, that’s nice.” He said, “Babe, we’re all right…” That’s the thing – not everyone has to have that set-up.’
Whitehouse is a hands-on dad to Delilah who loves ballet. ‘Paul is the best dad,’ says Mine. ‘He has the patience of a saint.’
Her love affair with the man who was once her teenage crush is helping her make a healthy emotional recovery. So has she still got Whitehouse’s autograph, scribbled more than half her lifetime ago in a supermarket aisle?
‘Yes,’ she laughs, ‘it’s in a pot at home.’
Mine Conkbayir’s book, Early Childhood And Neuroscience: Theory, Research And Implications For Practice, is published by Bloomsbury
My father’s presence represented tumult and anxiety and violence
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