Life at crossroads for Benny actor after cancer scare
FORMER Crossroads star Paul Henry has revealed how his life has been transformed by quitting smoking at the age of 70 – just not quite in the way he imagined.
“I seem to have been ill ever since I stopped!’’ the 76-year-old says.
But, at the turn of another New Year, he’s in great spirits, having beaten prostate cancer and battled sleep apnea since he packed in the cigarettes, and is trying to make the most of his two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Moving on from theatre work at Birmingham Rep, the formative years of Henry’s acting life peaked as bumbling Benny Hawkins in Crossroads in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Back then, the now Shropshirebased Henry would never have guessed that science would one day give him his own ‘bionic’ eye.
Today, some 35 years after Henry put away the famous woolly hat worn by the ‘‘slow’’ Benny from 197588, his life has been transformed by medical knowhow.
When Henry decided to undergo an operation to remove an eye, it improved his general health. And because he says his artificial eye moves in sync with his remaining real eye the look is natural.
“When I had the operation to remove my eye, the new one was attached to my nerves,” Henry explains. “And it moves with my other eye. I think I must have got some dirt in it when I was young and somehow it was eating away at my eye. The medication I was on wasn’t good for me so I felt a lot better when I had the eye removed.
“After, it was discovered I had sleep apnea. Then they found prostate cancer, so that was removed. I was then diagnosed with heart failure.
‘‘Four years ago they gave me between six months and five years – but my mother died last year, aged 96, so fingers crossed for me now that I’ve got two grand-children and three great-grandchildren.’’
Despite his recent health issues, Henry remains resolutely cheerful in conversation. Ever the realist, he quips: “The trouble is, once doctors start to look at you, they find something and then something else.
“If I’d only lived to be my grandparents’ age, I would have died healthy!
“I don’t drink and I stopped smoking at 70. I was a heavy smoker but I seem to have been ill ever since I stopped.”
Whether he will soon be watching Helena Bonham Carter playing former colleague Noele Gordon (sacked as Meg Mortimer in November, 1981) in a series called Nolly on new streaming channel ITVX is a moot point. “I don’t even know how to get that,” he says.
“Well, not yet. I imagine I will probably end up watching it.”