‘I was interested in real people, crime and survival so came up with this’
Denise Welch talks to Georgia Humphreys about her new true crime documentary
Some celebrities like to be guarded and are hesitant to speak candidly – but that is not the case with Denise Welch.
The Tynemouth-born actress, 62, is a regular panellist on the ITV chat show, Loose Women, and until recently, she would often share her opinions on Twitter too.
But the social media site can be a “toxic” place, and she has received some “vile” abuse in the past, she confides.
Then, one day last month, she woke up to find she had been logged out of Twitter – and there’s been no way of getting her account back.
“After 10 days, I thought, ‘I feel so much better without it!’” says Welch, who is best known for playing Natalie Horrocks in Coronation Street.
Welch has been extremely busy with work throughout the last year; firstly, there was her book, The Unwelcome Visitor, which explored her battles with episodes of clinical depression over more than 30 years, was published last March. Then in January this year, she joined the cast of Channel 4 soap, Hollyoaks, and now there’s her new documentary series launching on factual TV channel, Crime+investigation, called Survivors With Denise Welch.
In each of the six episodes, we see the host speak to someone who has been forced to confront unimaginable horror.
Cases featured in the sixpart series include being stabbing by a stranger and an acid attack, and there are also interviews with friends and family of the survivors, plus a criminal barrister’s expert commentary.
It’s a thought-provoking exploration of what it means to live with the trauma of enduring such horrific crimes, and the effort and courage required to rebuild a life in the aftermath.
“I was talking to a producer a couple of years ago and said that, as a presenter, I didn’t have any desire to do a sort of Davina Mccall-type floor show; I was interested in real people, I was interested in crime, and I was interested in survival. And so, we came up with this.”
“But I think that my own mental health advocacy and my own sobriety [she is an ambassador for the charity Mind and gave up drinking alcohol in 2012] has made me into a person that is perhaps more empathetic and a very good listener.”
Instead of taking notes into the interviews, she allowed it to just flow as a natural conversation.
“And if that meant sometimes that I imparted something about my life, that wasn’t me trying to go, ‘Oh, and this is also about me’,” she suggests.
“I did experience – many, many years ago – coercive control and emotional abuse, and although that isn’t me trying to say, ‘Mine was as bad as yours’ or anything like that, it meant that I could hopefully show some empathy and just allegiance to, for example, Bethany [Marchant, a survivor of a three-hour domestic abuse ordeal at the hands of her boyfriend], when she was talking about it.”
● Survivors With Denise Welch premieres on Crime+investigation today. Episodes will be available for 30 days on catch up.