EastEnders legend Rudolph Walker reveals tough relationship with his mother growing up

I did not know what was worse – staying inside and absorbing my licking, or the humiliation of a girlfriend watching my little private part dangling in front of me as I ran around the garden pursued by my mother

He’s one of Britain’s best-loved actors, starring in shows from Love Thy Neighbour and The Thin Blue Line before cementing his place in the hearts of TV audiences as loveable rogue Patrick Trueman in EastEnders, a role he has played for more than 20 years.

Now Rudolph Walker who turns 85 on Saturday is set to release his autobiography, Walking with Dignity, this week. In this compelling exclusive extract, the star opens up about his childhood in Trinidad, and what was often a challenging relationship with his mother.

My journey on earth began in the wee hours of the morning of 28 September 1939, at number 10, Tenth Street, Barataria, in the twin-island country of Trinidad and Tobago. Today, my birth certificate is the only proof I have of this beginning.

Christened Rudolph Malcolm Walker, I was called Malcolm when growing up, and I am still called Malcolm by my family and old school friends – no one ever called me Rudolph and it was a name I only began to use when I introduced myself to fellow passengers on board the ship that brought me to the UK. I did not even know that I was named Rudolph until I was well into my teens and needed my birth certificate for travelling purposes!

The house I grew up in was very small but meticulously clean, with the floor well-polished, but this still did not stop the odd rat or two trying to share any food we left exposed at night, and some of these were big and smart son-of-a-gun thieves.

By today’s standards, the house was a shack. We had no electricity or piped water until shortly before I left Trinidad in 1960. For light, we used kerosene lamps and candles. Every morning, from as far back as I can remember, before going to school it was my job to fetch water from the standpipe a block away.

Like many at the time, we were a single-parent family. My mother, Carmen Bishop, never married and had three children without a husband: myself, my sister Francillia Robinson (often called Eileen or Aliena) who is four years younger than me, and Veronica (known as Dawn) four years after that.

It was very common for women throughout the Caribbean to have children but not necessarily want to settle with anyone. I also had a younger brother, but he died when he was a few days old.

I was about three years old then, and two or three days after the birth, the doctor came to the house and then the baby was simply gone – I did not know why or how he died, or even his name. Just that one day he was in the house and the next he was not, and no one said a word. He was never mentioned afterwards, and my mother was the sort of person that you did not ask about her business.

She worked extremely hard to maintain us, mostly cooking and cleaning for some well-off families, and I admire her courage and strength in bringing up three of us – two girls and a boy – without a man in the house

As a child, I was quite afraid of her, because of what appeared to be any excuse to beat me, for the simplest of reasons. People living in my area when I was growing up would often say that I got licks for all the boys in the neighbourhood. Looking back at these frequent bouts of punishment, it was obvious that parents then believed that sparing the rod spoilt the child – though if I was raised like that these days in the UK, my mother would almost certainly have been dragged before the courts for child abuse. It was just the Trinidad custom when I grew up – I certainly wasn’t the only boy who would get a hiding if I got into trouble!

On a time he played truant, and the fallout that came from it, Rudolph recalls:

After dropping the first two lashes across my back, and she was a powerful woman, she demanded I take off my pants.
It was not a joking matter in those days when a mother told a boy child to take off his pants. I decided to make a run for it from under the bed, through the back door and into the backyard. I manipulated my body in an effort to negotiate fewer blows on my bare bottom as I leaped over the four steps.

Unfortunately for me, as I was flying in mid-air, who should I glimpse to my right, standing by the wire fence looking on, but the girl from next door – my current girlfriend!

I did not know what was worse – staying inside and absorbing my licking, or the humiliation of a girlfriend watching my little private part dangling in front of me as I ran around the garden pursued by my mother with a belt in her hand. It was also one of the last times I got a licking from her.

This was due to a piece of acting by me! One evening, I was again on the receiving end of my mother’s fury, naked from the waist down, and with quick thinking, I decided to act as if I were dead. I closed my eyes and made one dramatic fall backwards, and remained still.

After four lashes, I held my breath, playing dead. I then heard, ‘Malcolm! Malcolm! Malcolm!’

Mother, I sensed, was just beginning to panic, but I did not know what to do from there. As if by magic, I heard a bicycle bell in the front garden. It was my mother’s partner who lived round the corner from us.

She dashed to the door and dragged him inside. It gave me a few seconds to take some deep breaths. Then he gently said, ‘Malcolm’ several times. By that time, I really knew how to hold my breath. Next, he asked her for the smelling salts.

Well, I had to do something. Just before she brought the smelling salts, I started groaning faintly, and saying in a very faint voice, ‘Don’t hit me, please.’ By the time he had the smelling salts, I was breathing. The relief that came over my mother was something to behold. A few nights later, I decided to take the bull by the horns and confront her.

‘Excuse me, Mother,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what happened a few days ago, but why do you have to beat me so? I’m not bad.’

I am happy to say that it was the last licking I got from my mother, though it certainly wasn’t the only time I did something I knew she’d disapprove of.

As he approached adulthood, while his mother was initially reluctant for Rudolph to move overseas to pursue his acting dreams in Britain, in the end, she came around.

Several months went by with frustration building up within me, and then out of the blue, Mother came home one afternoon and said, ‘Look, if you really want to go to England then you should, you have my blessing.’ I was shocked.

I discovered a few years later that she had been on the bus coming home that evening and overheard a conversation between two women, one expressing her regret for not allowing her son to go to the United States when he wanted to, and how he had turned out to be a vagabond and blamed his mother daily for his missed opportunities. Of course, Mother did not want that to happen.

We spent about two months putting a leaving package together, $175.00 US. My mother borrowed some money from a local. In addition, Uncle Mitch, an old uncle of my mother, arranged with his godson, who was living in London at the time, to meet me on my arrival and also to find me a bedsit. The apprentices at work organised a farewell dinner at a Chinese restaurant in downtown Port-of-Spain. It was also going to be my first trip abroad, so the time when the decision was made to emigrate to the UK and the departure date was finalised was one of mixed feelings: apprehension, not knowing what to expect.

Three weeks on a ship to a place I had only read about. To stay with people who were strangers. Doubts, too. Would I truly make it? It was a brave thing to do, but at the time I was just filled with excitement at what was ahead.

And then, on the memorable night of 20 August 1960, I stepped out of my uncle’s car at the docks in Port-of-Spain and saw what was to me in those days a gigantic ship with the name Oranje Nassau painted along its side, a Dutch flagship, which for the first time was picking up passengers bound for England. I shook my uncle’s hand as was the custom in those days, (and) hugged my mother, who as usual displayed the minimum of emotion.

On a sad note, just before the start of the second series of The Thin Blue Line, I travelled to Trinidad to see my mother who was gravely ill and in the hospital.

It was very painful to see her, a woman who was so vibrant and always active, lying in the hospital bed, helpless and having to be washed and cleaned by the nurses. Her condition brought much sadness to my heart.

When I flew out to Trinidad, I was hoping against hope that it was not going to be the last time I would see her alive, but unfortunately, it was. She was so very sick, barely even recognising me.

I came out of the hospital ward realising that in all likelihood I would never see her again. Two weeks later, I was in the middle of rehearsals when I had a call from Trinidad telling me that she had passed away.

• To read more of Rudolph’s story you can buy his autobiography “ Walking With Dignity ” released September 26, 2024, by Chronos Publishing, priced £12.99 and available from all good bookstores and Amazon