| Heaven and Earth Interview 2 |
| continued |
| AB: How do you cope with, or do you thrive off fame? You know, Spandau Ballet, Krays and Eastenders have made you probably one of the most recognised of all people. MK: Yeah, fame’s a funny thing. I've kinda been famous on and off for a long time now. I was 17 when the band first started. Spandau Ballet was a huge band. So you kind of grow up with it and you adjust your life along the way. The best thing about being famous is when Shirlie says to me, "Can you come to Sainsburys" and I say, "Nope, I can't come, sorry, too famous, too much grief" And she knows that as well. AB: Yeah, and it looks like you suffer. Is that annoying or does that take away from some family things, if you went to the zoo or if you went to a theme park with your kids? MK: Yeah, you got it. That's the worst thing. The worst thing about being famous, easily, is the fact that you can't do those things with your kids like swimming or going to the zoo without it affecting them. AB: Obviously, I can't interview you without asking you about the very lowest period of your life, when you had your brain tumours. What were you doing at the time? What stage in your career were you? MK: I was making a movie in Los Angeles and I was lying on the bed and Shirlie was stroking my head, we were watching TV and she felt this huge lump on my skull and she said to me "there’s a problem". We came back to London and the first thing they did was stuck me in a scanner and they discovered that the brain tumour I had was huge and that the skull had grown out of shape. AB: You must have known what was going on in the back of your head and hidden it and kept it to yourself. MK: No, not at all, I didn't have a clue. when I discovered the tumour I was fitter and stronger than I'd ever been in my life. I was in the gym every day, but maybe that was fate, you know, maybe that was someone saying "get in there and get yourself ready for this". Because maybe if I wasn't fit, then I wouldn't have been able to cope with it as well. AB: How did you cope with it? Because obviously the physical strength that you needed to get through that operation was immense. MK: Yeah, it was tough. I mean, it’s very strange, you go through something like that and the surgeons do a wonderful job, like you say, I mean, I wouldn't be here today if they didn't. But you come out of that and then you come out the other side and you go back home and there’s no follow-up to that. If you go through a period where you think you're going to die, then it frightens the hell out of you and it’s going to come out , whether it comes out the month after or two years down the line, it will come out. AB: So was it the fear of death that you kept with you, that you couldn't shake off? MK: If I died then fair enough, right? That's what I said, I felt like, at the time, I'd had a really good run and I'd lived ten lifetimes already through being in that band, but what scared me was leaving my kids behind and letting them grow up without me and that shook me. AB: You dreamt a lot, I'm fascinated by your dreams because you kept having these dreams which you went back into in therapy, didn't you? MK: It was only when Shirlie talked me into going to see a cranial osteopath and we started talking about dreams and about stuff that, you know, he was kind of healing me in a way, kind of new age healing thing and as soon as he started talking to me, I was in tears, I broke down and I think I cried solidly for like two weeks. All this stuff was coming out but during that I remembered lots of things from my childhood that I would go straight home and I would write down on my computer that ended up within the book and to this day, I think that therapy helped me a lot. AB: And did you have faith? I know you were quite cynical beforehand, are you now much more open to all kinds of alternative therapies and healings? MK: Every now and again. I'm a really bad person, because I have faith in everything when I need it. You call out "Oh God, help me" at times when you need it and at other times when you don't, you become cynical again. AB: Did you call out to God when you were lying in you hospital bed? MK: Oh yeah. Now, if you ask me do I think God exists, then I'll have a different answer but..... AB: What's that? No? MK: Well. AB: You can say that, it’s all right, I'm not going to shoot you down. MK: No, I wouldn't like to say that, I'd like to say I'm not sure, obviously I’m not sure because I know for a fact the next time that I am in trouble, that I’m gonna ask him for help again, so I wouldn't like to diss him now. AB: It may be that you need a faith, but actually that’s usually your family isn't it? MK: Yeah of course it is, yeah it’s the family. AB:. And when it's something big like a brain tumour that they can't help you with, then you need to turn to something else. MK: You need help outside, and if you don't know where that help is going to come from, then its nice to know or to feel like that someone's looking after you. AB: You were lucky. MK: Yeah, very lucky. AB: Well, not lucky to get it, "you were lucky, you had two brain tumours, you were lucky, if you know what I mean. MK: Well, you know, it is luck. It's luck the way its worked out, its luck that I was given that to get over and that I've learnt an awful lot from it. maybe its luck in the way that I took that I experience on board and as an actor, just in a professional sense, you need experiences like that to make your work true, you need to find how low you can go in life. AB: Did you heal any broken friendships? Did you go and say "I'm going to give something back to the world?” You know, a lot of people go through that. MK: For the first year you do, yeah, because its all very fresh in your brain, but then, after a certain time, I think my time to move on was starting Eastenders and it was the next stage in my life. Whoever or whatever gave me that job changed my life, because it stopped me thinking about being sick, it stopped me having my picture in the papers, saying ‘Martin Kemp’ and underneath it would say "brain tumour" and it went "Martin Kemp, actor" and I'd moved on. AB: Now you've exorcised your demons through therapy and you've written the book and you've come through those operations successfully, do you feel totally invincible? MK: You know, most people go through life and think that brain tumours and terrible stuff like that are never going to happen to me and you abuse your life in a way, I think I'm a lot more aware of it, so in a way, the answer to the question is completely the opposite. You can be touched by it at any moment, which is scary. AB: Martin Kemp, thank you very much. MK: Thank You. |