Bad boys & to Oyboys
I began my affair with Sid to get him off my back and ended up loving him
With her naughty wiggle and fi lthy giggle, Barbara Windsor always had her pick of the men. The bubbly starlet quickly became the leading British sex symbol of the 60s – and certainly made the most of all the male attention.
Married three times, those with whom she had affairs and one-night stands included footballers, pop stars and infamous gangsters.
And she happily admitted taking love-struck admirers to bed just to do them a favour. By the time she met Scott Mitchell, her third husband and love of her life, Babs had, by her own admission, enjoyed more than 100 lovers.
In fact her appetite for the opposite sex once prompted fellow Carry On star and good friend Kenneth Williams to warn one of her boyfriends: “Oooh, you don’t want to go out with her – she’ll have it off with anyone.”
The actress – voted Rear of the Year in 1976 – once admitted: “Sex is important to me.
“I like it. I’ve never needed a man for security because I’ve always earned my own living.
“If I was with a man purely for companionship it just wouldn’t work. There has to be that spark.”
Babs’ love life was as dizzyingly chaotic as the bawdy movies that brought her fame.
She had brief relationships with both East End gangster Reggie Kray and his brother Charlie before meeting another bad boy Ronnie Knight, who was already married.
He divorced his wife June to tie the knot with her in 1964. Bizarrely, Barbara took camp co-star Kenneth Williams with them on honeymoon.
Just two years later she began a tenyear secret affair with Carry On co-star Sid James.
She told the Mirror in 2000 that she began it to get him off her back.
“He’d been pestering me for months. At the time I didn’t even fancy him,” she said
“But he obviously thought I was this raving, sexy little thing and I thought if I did the dirty deed he’d leave me alone.”
She admitted it led to a deep, emotional affair which lasted until Sid’s death in 1976. “Yes, I loved him in the end,” she said. “But I also loved Ronnie. I felt safe with him.”
Barbara has also revealed she had a fling with George Best, describing the football idol’s performance in bed as “fabulous”.
“There was this vision. He was so beautiful,” she remembered of the moment he chatted her up at a Carry On premiere.
“I said ‘Look, don’t waste your time with me, darling, you’ve got all these lovely ladies after you’.
“And he said ‘ Well, when do I ever
I took Bee Gee legend Maurice to bed just to help him
get to talk to somebody like you?’
“Well, that did it. It [the sex] was great. He was fabulous.”
She also once admitted she took late Bee Gee Maurice Gibb to bed just to help him with his stage fright.
“When the Bee Gees broke up I was doing a musical and they wanted Maurice.
“He was very good in the show but director Ned Sherrin came up to me and said ‘ He has no balls on stage. You have to do something.’ So I asked him for dinner but he said ‘Let’s just go to bed’.
“He knew he was not getting it on stage. He was better next time.” But although Babs’ men have been numerous, she was the first to admit that none – until the last – brought her the happiness she craved.
She once blamed her father, who abandoned her when she was 15, for her early promiscuity.
She said: “I think it was then I started to pander to men.
“I have always had this thing about being eager to please. I think I was subconsciously trying to make sure these men didn’t abandon me like Dad.”
It was during another unhappy marriage, to restaurateur Stephen Hollings, that Barbara met actorturnedconsultant Scott Mitchell, who at 29 was half her age.
She described their wedding day in 2000 – just as she was enjoying success again as Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders – as “the happiest day of my life” and admitted she couldn’t stop crying with joy.
Despite scepticism because of the age gap, the relationship was to stand the test of the years.
She said at the time: “What Scott and I have is different.
“We’re right for each other and we know it. We split up for a couple of years but in the end we couldn’t live without each other.
“We’re like two funny little gnomes running about our house.
“We cook together, we laugh together and we talk a lot.
“I know he loves me very much and, from the bottom of my heart, I know we will always be together. I was never completely sure of Ronnie or Stephen. But I am sure of Scott – more than I’ve ever been sure of anyone.
“My only worry is that, having found him, something might happen to him. And I couldn’t cope with that.”
It was 14 years later that Barbara received her devastating Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Scott, then 51, devoted himself to caring for his wife as her health deteriorated – and Barbara Windsor knew she’d been loved to the very end.