A magical love that cannot die
What he told doctors when they had grim news? ‘Just tell Deb.’ His funeral instructions? A chorus of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. His last words? ‘I love you.’ Brave, tearful and deeply moving, a spellbinding interview with Paul Daniels’ widow: the lovely Debbie Mc
BURSTING through their living room door dressed in nothing but a tight Lycra running suit, Paul Daniels proceeded to jog back and forth past his wife on the sofa until she giggled. ‘I’m not a person who gets depressed, but one day I was feeling a bit down, which is very unlike me,’ the ‘Lovely’ Debbie McGee recalls.
‘Paul said he was popping out to the shops. The next thing I know he’s running through this room in a man’s keep-fit outfit. It didn’t suit him but he looked hysterical and you couldn’t help but laugh. He’d gone to Henley, about four miles from us, just to buy it. It sounds mad but that was Paul. He would go to great lengths to play jokes and would do anything to make you laugh.’
The 57-year-old can’t quite believe that she is now planning Paul’s funeral. She was at his side for the past month since he was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour and was there in the early hours of Thursday morning when he peacefully passed away in their bed aged 77.
They had known each other for 36 years, married for 28, and rarely spent a night apart.
So when I meet Debbie at the couple’s £2.5 million home on the banks of the River Thames in Berkshire just a day later, for this, her first exclusive print interview, I’m surprised to find her utterly composed. Immaculately dressed in a revealing red Ted Baker dress and stiletto shoes – a present from Paul – with perfectly painted pink nails, platinum hair piled high and make-up fixed, the 5ft 1in blonde flits around in what she calls ‘ Debbie mode’, making tea and cooing over the three white rabbits Paul used in his magic shows.
A presenter on Radio Berkshire for eight years, she insists that she will be in the studio for her slot this week as usual.
The show, it seems, must go on. But the grief she clearly feels for the loss of the man she calls the love of her life – and who the rest of us know as the
I don’t think we’ll meet again in heaven...
nation’s best-loved magician – is never far from the surface. She is tinier than ever – in the last month she has lost half a stone – and looks worn out, the result of nightly vigils by Paul’s side. During our talk, she gulps back tears as she recalls his last moments.
‘I’m in such shock, it hasn’t sunk in,’ she says when we finally sit down. ‘It’s been so quick. I don’t think Paul and I will meet again in heaven. I don’t believe in the afterlife – I wish I did.
‘But Paul’s presence is still everywhere. I’m waiting for him to walk through the door.
‘You don’t feel heartbroken, you feel like your heart’s been shattered. It’s like every part of your being has been torn apart.’
She agrees that the death of the man who regularly pulled in TV audiences of 15million on The Paul Daniels Magic Show from 1979 to 1994 will not sink in properly until after his funeral. Debbie is busy organising a private ceremony for close friends and family near the couple’s home, but reveals there will be a public memorial.
She has already given the undertaker a solid silver wand presented to Paul as an award which will be placed on the top of his coffin. He will wear a favourite suit and tie.
The songs are yet to be decided but will include Sammy Davis Jr’s Mr Bojangles and Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. ‘He always told people to sing that when they were sad,’ Debbie says. All three of his sons from his first marriage – Paul Junior, 55, Martin, 52 and Gary, 47, will be at the funeral as will his ex-wife, Jacqueline Skipworth, 73. The only instruction Paul left was a wish to be cremated. ‘He was so claustrophobic, the idea of being buried alive terrified him,’ Debbie says. The couple never discussed his death and, astonishingly, Paul only once mentioned his life-threatening illness that had caused him to be rushed into hospital in February.
Two weeks’ ago, they had been sitting watching the ducks from their floor-to-ceiling windows, when he suddenly fixed Debbie with a hard stare. ‘He asked, “What on earth is wrong with me?” Debbie recalls.
‘I don’t know where I got my strength from but I didn’t cry. I said, “Darling, you’ve got a brain tumour.” Paul didn’t react. He just looked at me and then looked out of the window at the ducks. I think he knew then, he must have taken it in – he took other things in – but he didn’t ask any more. He didn’t want to know. I never ever said it was terminal.’
They had both been starring in Aladdin at the Ipswich Regent late last year when Debbie first noticed a problem. He seemed constantly tired, was struggling to remember his lines and seemed confused.
After various tests, a CT scan at the Royal Berkshire Hospital revealed the tumour.
‘Paul said he didn’t want to know what was wrong with him then. He told the doctor, “Just tell Deb.” The consultant showed me the scan.
‘I am always a “cup overflowing” kind of person but I remember thinking, “I can’t take this in.” But it was there on the screen, he had a brain tumour – the most aggressive type you can get. The consultant said he didn’t believe it was operable. I broke down but then my Debbie mode kicked in. I thought, “Right we’re just going to get on with this.”’
Later, the specialists delivered their devastating diagnosis: it was inoperable and Paul only had a
couple of months left. Debbie brought him home from hospital on February 23 and Paul’s sons rushed to his bedside.
‘The moment he came in through the front door he was laughing and joking,’ she says. ‘We talked and talked for hours and he sang Beatles songs. We ate his favourite Magnum ice creams on the patio.
‘The last week he was in bed but he was still cracking jokes. Even on his death bed he flirted and told a nurse she was looking good.’
Debbie made sure he never saw her crying. ‘Each time I went into our bedroom I took a breath and walked in with a smile. I wore makeup every day. He would lie in bed, pucker up his lips, joking with me for a kiss.’ But Paul rapidly deteriorated. ‘Two days before he died, his voice was going and he whispered: “I love you.” It was the last thing he said,’ she says choking up with tears.
Paul slipped into a coma, or a sleep, as Debbie calls it.
‘Having him at home was a very comforting thing. The best thing I did was bring him home. I could not bear him never coming back here.’
Late on Wednesday evening Debbie had just gone to sleep in the spare bedroom, when a nurse woke her and told her Paul’s death was moments away.
‘I got up and went into our room. Paul was on his side, I snuggled up beside him. I told him I loved him and held him. Just eight minutes later he died. I didn’t cover his face. He was smiling – I called it his “cute face”. The next morning was totally surreal. I came into our room and said, “Morning darling”. It was like a dream, you don’t take it in, but it was a nightmare. Years ago we talked about death because he was so much older than me. He would say, “Always be happy, never be sad.” ’
She would, she says, never have dreamed of giving an interview so soon after Paul’s death but this is for a charity close to her heart. The Mail On Sunday has offered to donate Debbie’s fee to Brain Tumour Research, which, unbelievably, does not receive Government funding.
The charity’s seventh ‘Wear A Hat’ day falls on Thursday, and the public – and readers – are encouraged to do just that in Paul’s memory and donate a pound or more to the cause.
‘I will miss him making me laugh every day,’ she says. ‘Even if we were arguing he would make me laugh. And I really will miss the magic, not the tricks, just him, his magic. We were always a team; we were always together.
‘I’m glad he went first,’ she adds. ‘If it had been me he wouldn’t have been able to cope. He hated being on his own. Paul’s always been my reason for doing things. I’m scared about being on my own. I have amazing family and friends but they’re not Paul – he was the love of my life. I could never and would never replace him.’
The couple were married for nearly three decades. Debbie, who trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet school, met Paul in 1979 when she was selected to be one of his dancers on his shows in Great Yarmouth. She was 20 and he was 40.
He famously said he saw her sitting against a wall and thought she looked like the little mannequin drawing between the paragraphs of Playboy magazine. It was love at first sight for her too.
‘I fancied him from the beginning. There was an electric chemistry,’ she says. ‘He had charisma and he made me laugh, but he kept me at arms length. I was in love with him but he said I was too young.’
She later auditioned to be his TV assistant but lost out to her best friend in the first series of his BBC show. She tried again and was picked for the second series.
‘I loved every minute of it but I never thought I was any good as a magician’s assistant. It looked so corny. I got more fanmail than any of the other girls he’d used [fans used to ask her to kiss cards and send them back]. Paul said my timing was perfect.’
They married in 1988. Debbie wore a lavish dress made by a BBC costumier and arrived at the register office in a horse-drawn glass coach.
It was, she says, ‘an incredible life’ with the man who some found brash but she says was so sensitive that he would cry at the news when he saw tragedies such as the migrant crisis. But, of course, he loved a prank.
‘In the first illusion I did with him, I had to lie in a long crate while he inserted pieces of glass. We’d been rehearsing the trick and I was locked in the box. I heard him say to the crew, “Right, is it time for a tea break?”
‘Once I was in panto in Norwich in Babes In The Wood and Paul was in Germany working, or so I thought.
‘In fact for an hour before the show, and the first half, he’d hidden in a box. In the second act he jumped out on stage. I couldn’t stop giggling.’
She says Paul never uttered his famous catchphrase, “You’ll like this... not a lot, but you’ll like it” at home. ‘From the very first time I was his assistant he referred to me as ‘the Lovely Debbie McGee’. He didn’t tell me beforehand and he didn’t call me that at home. I was Deb or Debbie. He was Paul. Although we once tried to learn Spanish and I called him Paolo for a little while.’
The couple never had children together – her decision – and in 1995 she famously appeared on The Mrs Merton show and was asked, ‘So, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?’ ‘For about five years’ after that, taxi drivers would shout it in the street. But Paul wasn’t a millionaire when I met him.’ Paul, born Newton Edward Daniels, in 1938 in South Bank, Middlesbrough, started doing magic tricks aged 11 after coming across a book on Victorian magic during a rainy childhood holiday.
He worked and worked, perfecting his act until he reached his peak with his BBC show, which became must-watch Saturday night viewing. But the magic started to fade and he was axed in 1994. The BBC did not tell him directly. Instead he and Debbie heard the news by chance from a costume designer.
‘That was disgraceful,’ Debbie says. ‘Alan Yentob [then controller of BBC1], who axed the show, said Paul hated him for it. Paul always said he hated him before.’
But it gave Paul the opportunity to return to his first love – live shows. The couple were so famous they were flown around the world to give private performances.
He gave a show for Prince Rainier of Monaco and even performed for a young Prince William, who rather naughtily announced that there was a hole in one of Paul’s tricks. He was told to ‘sit down, shut up and be good’.
Later Paul and Debbie appeared in a host of reality TV shows. Paul and dance partner Ola Jordan went out in the third round of Strictly Come Dancing in 2010. There were II’m lucky I marriedm him. It truly was a fairy tale also turns as a couple on Celebrity Wife Swap (Debbie swapped places with Vanessa Feltz) and The Farm.
They never stopped and had been due to start a rather gruelling 41-date tour around the country in January, which has obviously now been cancelled. She reveals that he didn’t need to work and now neither does she, but says she will continue to present her radio show and ‘crack the whip’ in the couple’s magic shop in Wigan, run by Paul’s eldest son Paul Junior.
This father-son relationship has been fractious. Paul Jr was once caught growing cannabis plants at his home and then selling bags of the drug from the shop (Paul’s youngest, Gary, has also had a brush with the law after he stole £10,000 from the NHS to pay debts).
‘Paul Junior was a lazy boy,’ Debbie says. ‘We had some very difficult times. But the wonderful thing is that everything was resolved in recent years. His dad was always there for him and I want to carry that on.’
Tonight she will sleep in the bed where her husband died and tomorrow she will try to carry on without him. ‘At first I didn’t think I could sleep in our bed, but now I feel privileged to have been there with him when he died, by his side, making him feel safe,’ she says. ‘I am lucky that I was married to him. It truly was a fairy tale.’
After giving me a warm hug, Debbie waves me off past the ducks and swans and Paul’s Isuzu Trooper with the number plate ‘MAG1C’. The man may be gone, but his little touch of magic will never be far away.
I will really missm the magic –not the tricks, just him