Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Robert said he fell a little bit in love with me ...I’d say I was a little bit in love with him, too
side me. I know he was extremely fond of me – and it was mutual.”
The relationship never progressed beyond a close friendship, however. From 1978, when the first series aired, up to Carol leaving the show, Robert was still married to Sally Pearson, his second wife and the mother of two of his three children.
When Carol announced she wasn’t returning to film another series, Robert, who by 1986 had divorced his wife, was devastated.
“The only time he ever got mad with me was when we did our last scene together,” recalls Carol. “He said to me, ‘You’re not doing that right!’ and I was completely taken aback.
“It was only afterwards I realised it was the emotion of the fact that we weren’t going to be together again. It was very difficult for me to make that decision, but I had to go on and do other things. I felt the role was limited. Robert used to say I was like a racehorse at the gate of a race, just waiting to go charging out.”
Carol went on to travel, eventually settling in France and marrying, before pursuing a career in writing.
She’s just published a book, The Lost Girl, which is set both during the terrorist attack on Paris in 2015 and after the Second World War in Provence.
Even after Carol left and her role as Helen was taken over by Lynda Bellingham, she kept in touch with Robert, who played Siegfried right up to the last broadcast in 1990.
That included when, around 1995, he was battling cancer. “He was wonderfully funny about his cancer,” she says. “He’d joke about what the surgeon had said to him. He joked so we wouldn’t be concerned for him. He’d brush off things about himself that he thought might upset others.”
His ailing health and advancing years didn’t stop Robert playing Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter movies from 2002. But by 2007, when he made his last foray as the Minister of Magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the studio couldn’t afford the £1million insurance bill to have him play the role.
Carol says: “He loved doing Harry Potter and was quite upset when they couldn’t get insurance for him to continue in the films – I remember him telling me that. He thought it was great fun and liked the fact it introduced a whole new audience to him.
Since divorcing his wife in 1986, Robert never remarried and apparently lived out his years as a single man. But Carol, who clearly still holds him in great affection, finds this hard to believe.
“Maybe he wasn’t on his own. He was discreet enough not to have had it in the public eye,” she says, laughing. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if there had been someone. I’m sure there would have been plenty of ladies who would have been willing.
“When I met him again last year, he was 90 and, though he looked more fragile, frail and thinner, somehow he still looked absolutely dashing.”