Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I’m much younger than Paul and the jibes hurt him more than me.. for the first year of marriage we stayed in
When Paul died I lost my sparkle.. the show has given me clear feelings of happy back
Paul had Debbie chuckle long before they met. She said: “I saw him on Blankety Blank. He was funny. He took his jacket off and he had a Superman T-shirt on and red knickers over his trousers. I was in hysterics.”
Debbie was already an ambitious performer. She was just three when she started ballet classes in Surbiton, Surrey, with sister Donna Phelan, 57. Donna recalled how she would be out playing but Debbie would spend hours practising. By 16, she had won a place at the Royal Ballet School.
Three years later, she took the bold decision to join the Iranian Ballet Company but her career was cut short when she had to flee Tehran as revolution came in 1979. Debbie says: “I was able to get a ticket on the last plane that left Tehran Airport. I paid about 10 times what you would normally. The troops had created a barrier around the city, it was really scary.”
As Debbie tried to board she was locked in an office “the size of a cupboard” and grilled about her passport. She eventually won over a customs officer. “He said, ‘Run’, and we ran across the tarmac and up the steps,” recalls Debbie. “It was like a movie.”
Shortly after arriving home, Debbie met Paul at rehearsals for his summer show in Great Yarmouth. She then became a dancer, touring with bands including ABBA before reuniting with Paul in Bournemouth the following year.
By then, Paul had split from first wife Jacqueline, with whom he had sons, Paul, Martin, and Gary. His devilish sense of humour soon had Debbie hooked. She said: “We were messing about constantly. I remember sticking my tongue out and he said, ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t put that in my mouth’, and I said, ‘You would!’.”
The unlikely couple tied the knot on
April 2, 1988 – when their TV show had 15 million viewers. Far from her butter-wouldn’t-melt image, Paul shocked fans by bragging of their bedroom antics. He told of “sexathons”, revealing he once found Debbie “lying stark naked on the bed with a blindfold on saying Do Not Disturb over her eyes and further down her body a sign saying Disturb”.
From the late 1990s, Debbie again found their relationship under attack, twice having to explain pictures of Paul kissing younger women. In 1998 the magician, then 60, got “carried away” when 19-year-old Bena Dobson tried to kiss him on the cheek and he gave her a kiss on the lips.
And there was a similar incident at a 2006 Hull University show. Loyal Debbie came out swinging, revealing it was one of his jokes, where he pretended to kiss someone on the cheek but turned his head at the last minute. “I wouldn’t describe Paul as a dirty old man but he’s too flirty for his own good,” she said at the time. Debbie kept on smiling, just as she did on stage, even after