Monkhouse speaks of youngest son tragedy

Veteran comedian Bob Monkhouse told of the devastating effect the death of his youngest son had on him.

The veteran star recalled the strained relationship he had with his son Simon, 46 - who died from a heroin overdose in Thailand - and how the conflict between them remained unresolved at his death in April last year.

The 73-year-old told the Mail on Sunday's Night and Day magazine - ahead of a TV documentary Bob Monkhouse on Bob Monkhouse - how the rift with his son stemmed from his divorce from first wife Elizabeth Ormerod.

The marriage started to disintegrate when Simon was in his early teens, he reveals and he became torn between his parents.

"He continued to try to find a balance between me and his mother," Monkhouse says, "a way of trying to give loyalty to each in equal measure."

The divide deepened after Monkhouse introduced Simon to a television crew when he expressed an interest in becoming a cameraman.

But Simon then discovered that he was too short, and his eyesight too bad to be a television cameraman and he felt that his father had humiliated him by making the introduction.

"He took offence at my action," Monkhouse said and the relationship disintegrated from there.

"Thereafter he became annoyed whenever my family was mentioned in print," he says.

Every time there was a mention Simon called his father in a fury until one day Monkhouse told him to write his criticisms down and Simon wrote a long and "hurtful" critique about what was wrong with him.

There was a brief reunion when Simon embraced his father at a Variety Club do but the row exploded again when Monkhouse mentioned the episode to a reporter and it appeared in print.

Simon then severed all contact, ignoring him at his elder son Gary's funeral and his daughter Abigail's wedding.

Though Monkhouse continued to send postcards to Simon, the correspondence was all one-sided.

"The next thing I had a phone call from some officer," he says, "some police or customs man.

He thought I already knew that Simon had died. So he was asking me, 'What do you want to do with the body?' which was a rather brutal way to learn what had happened. It's affected me profoundly, as you would expect."

:: Bob Monkhouse on Bob Monkhouse will be screened on ITV on Tuesday March 26.

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