Article: Phil Middlemiss (Des Barnes)
Glenda Young
From AOL online Daily Mirror
EXCLUSIVE: STREET STAR'S REAL MUM TELLS HOW SHE SPOTTED HIM ON TV AFTER 25
YEARS
WEEPING Yvonne Lloyd told yesterday of the moment she saw Des Barnes on
Coronation Street for the first time and recognised him as the son she was
forced to give away 25 years earlier. Des's eyes, high forehead and cheeky
half smile all prompted bitter-sweet memories of the past when Yvonne cuddled
a baby boy and vowed to protect him. Unable to drag her gaze from the TV
screen, she went to a cabinet and drew out a bible in which she kept a
well-thumbed picture of the newborn tot. Like so many times before, she
stared at it. Then she looked back to the screen. The man now known to
millions as Dirty Des the Street's randy love rat was the image of her son,
Ivor. Instinctively, Yvonne clutched her stomach and waited for the credits
to roll. She said: "Suddenly his name, Phil Middlemiss, appeared. I knew
instantly he was the son I had adopted." Yvonne, a 57-year-old pub landlady,
has kept that stark moment of recognition eight years ago a secret even from
her closest family and friends until today. Now she has only agreed to speak
for the first time about the boy she loved and lost because she wants
33-year-old Phil to know how she vainly battled to keep him. Tears rolling
down her cheeks at her home in Wakefield, West Yorks, the mother of three and
gran of five said: "I pray he understands. He has to believe I never wanted
to talk about this. "But then I realised people had found out. It was out of
my control and I wanted to be the one to tell the story first." Yvonne wants
Phil to know how she was: SHUNNED by society and sent to a "hellish" home for
unmarried mums. BULLIED into giving her son away when he was only ten days
old, not even being allowed to kiss him goodbye. DESPERATELY memorised the
reg number of the car that took him away. With her loyal husband Ivor, 55,
gripping her hand as he heard her story for the first time, Yvonne told how
she fel pregnant at the age of 23 when she was living in Stockton-on-Tees.
She said: "Being Catholic I knew sex before marriage was wrong, but I loved
my boyfriend and thought he loved me. It wasn't a one-off thing. "He was a
lad of 25 who worked on building sites and I'd been seeing him for about a
year and a half. I was convinced that one day we'd marry. "It was a shock
when I found I was pregnant but I thought he'd stand by me. When I told him,
he didn't want to know, upped and left. I was left to tell my mum." Yvonne
knew an abortion was out of the question. She also knew her troubled family
life made it impossible for her to keep the baby. She said: "My father
Herbert was traumatised by his experiences in the war. As a member of the
wartime SAS he'd been tortured by the Gestapo, and twice stood in front of a
firing squad and survived. He won the Military Medal for bravery. "He
couldn't cope with civilian life and drank heavily to forget up to 14 pints
in an afternoon. Then he'd become violent to my mother. I knew if I told him
I was pregnant, he'd take it out on my mum." Terrified of being found out
Yvonne, who was working as a garage attendant, kept her growing pregnancy
from her family for an amazing six months by hiding her bulge under baggy
layers of clothing. But living at home with two of her three sisters it
became increasingly difficult to disguise. Eventually she confided in her
married elder sister, Doreen. Doreen begged her to tell her mother, Laura.
But Yvonne felt too ashamed and finally her sister broke the news. Yvonne
said: "My mother was devastated. She put her arms around me and we sobbed
together. We both knew what had to happen. Where we came from, unmarried
girls hardly ever kept their babies. "I sobbed every day and prayed that some
miracle would happen, so I could keep my baby, but it never did. I was only
earning 6 a week. There were no benefits and I knew I wouldn't be able to
cope without a husband to support me and my child." Eventually, the family's
unsympathetic doctor gave Yvonne the address of an adoption agency which
suggested she go to a home for unmarried mothers. Reluctantly, Yvonne agreed.
Shocked and miserable, she packed her bags and headed for the council-run
home in a stark Victorian house 40 miles away in Gateshead. Doreen travelled
with her for support. Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw when
she stepped through the heavy, wooden doors. She said quietly: "I thought I'd
died and gone to hell. There were about 19 girls there, and I was the eldest.
Some had been thrown out by their families. One, who was only 12, had been
abused by her father. I shared a bedroom with three others and though we were
all heavily pregnant we had to clean, cook and do the laundry. "Two women ran
the home with a rod of iron. I felt so alone. You were allowed to come and
go, but it was like living in a prison. I just kept thinking 'Why me?' "I
turned to Doreen, and said 'Don't ever tell mother what this place is like,'
because I knew mum would drag me away. I couldn't let that happen, as then
we'd have to tell my father. "That first night, I pulled the covers over my
head and broke my heart crying." Yvonne had told the rest of her family she
was staying with a friend. The pal helped her hide the truth by sending her
postcards from Ireland. Yvonne would write them and post them back to Ireland
from where they would be sent to her family." On June 18, 1963, her waters
broke. As the pain wracked her slight 8st frame, Yvonne begged the home to
call her sister. Her family had no phone, so calls had to be made to a phone
box on a corner near her home in the hope someone would answer and pass on a
message. But when the message got through it wasn't Doreen who turned up. It
was her mother. Yvonne said: "She took one look at me and said 'What have
they done to you?' I'd put on make-up and it was running down my face with
the tears. "Mum stayed by my side and held my hand, but they wouldn't let her
into the delivery room. I was terrified. I'd never known pain like it. No one
had told me what it was like to have a baby. "My son was born at about 3.30pm
the following day. Mother stayed with me as long as she could, but had to get
the train back home. "I remember the doctor who delivered the baby she was
from my street back home. I'd travelled 40 miles to have my baby in secret
and I was terrified she'd tell. But she was amazingly kind to me and kept
quiet." The minute her healthy 8lb 14oz baby was put in her arms, Yvonne
forgot her long and painful labour. She said: "Words can't describe how I
felt as I looked at him for the first time. He was so perfect. With his soft,
dark hair he looked just like his father. I knew at that moment I'd willingly
die to protect him and vowed to do my very best to keep him." Lovingly, she
named him Sean. Lying in hospital after the birth, Yvonne experienced the
bitter prejudice against unmarried mothers. As a doctor examined her son, he
shouted to her across a room crowded with proud mums and dads "Are you
keeping him, or are you having him adopted?" Yvonne recalled: "It was awful."
She had been told that she had three months after the baby was born in which
to make a final decision about adoption. But as each day passed, she grew
more and more attached to her son. Fearing she might have no choice but to
have him adopted, she tried to stop loving the baby. But it wasn't possible.
She said: "I tried so hard to be indifferent to him. I even stopped fussing
over him for a day, but it was hopeless. I couldn't help myself. I was the
one who fed him, changed his nappies and got up in the middle of the night to
cuddle him when he cried. "It was cruel they made me get so close to him. I
wanted to snatch him from his cot and run like hell. Day and night, I prayed
for a miracle to let me keep him. I kept asking my mum and my sister if
anything had changed at home, but they said it was worse than ever." All the
time, she said, she was badgered into giving up her child for adoption. She
said: "They kept saying to me 'Don't be selfish,' and 'Think of the baby.'
You were made to feel guilty and treated with contempt. In the end, I had no
choice." A week after the birth, Yvonne defied doctors by taking her son for
the day to Newcastle. She just wanted to be alone with him. Knowing that her
time with him was limited, she spent all her money having a tiny black and
white photo taken of Sean in a photography shop. She said: "I begged my
sister to bring me some money, and took Sean out for the day to Newcastle to
have it done. The photographer made me put on an engagement and wedding ring
for the photo." To this day, that one treasured snapshot is her only memento
of her son. Three days later, Yvonne was callously told a home had been found
for her boy. Still thinking she had three months in which to make her final
decision, she reluctantly agreed insisting only that her child retained his
name. To this day, Sean is Phil's middle name. Yvonne can never forget the
day Sean's adoptive parents came to collect the tot. It was policy not to let
mums hand over their children. Yvonne was barred from seeing them and was not
even allowed to kiss her baby goodbye. Her voice breaking at the agonising
memory, she said: "I heard the door bell go and a woman's voice say 'Darling,
he's gorgeous.' I just thought 'What are you doing, Yvonne? It's your lad
they're taking.' "They'd made me sit in a downstairs room so I couldn't see
the parents. But I ran upstairs and saw a bluey-green car parked outside. I
looked at its registration number and desperately memorised it. It was an
old-style plate and from the letters I knew the car was from West Hartlepool.
"Then I saw two figures. She was dark and slim, and he was tallish. But all I
could look at was the baby she held in her arms. "Theey dragged me away from
the window. They were screaming at me saying how selfish I was, that it was
all for the baby's good, and how I couldn't afford to bring him up on my own.
All I could think of was the car number plate. I kept repeating it in my
mind. I couldn't afford to forget it." Today, Phil who once admitted to
sleeping with more than 100 women is still close to his adoptive parents and
happily settled with 23-year-old drama student Alison King. He has been on a
break from the Street where Des has broken hearts in a string of flings. But
he returns to filming this week. Yvonne, who has closely followed his career,
said: "I don't want anything from him, but I think he deserves to know the
truth. I want him to know how much I loved and fought for him. To this day, I
can still remember that number plate. For me then, it was the only link with
my son."
Yvonne received no money for this interview.
Glenda Young
http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dlc4gy