Young Ones Nigel Planer opens up on 'hardest time ever' as he discusses divorce

Finding fame as lentil-loving hippy Neil in cult comedy The Young Ones, Nigel Planer’s character was probably the most likely of the four anarchic pals who shared a house to grow up and become a poet.

Spookily, now 71, Nigel is on tour this week delivering poetry written from his life experiences, including Waking Up Without You from his book Making Other Plans , which takes him back to a time when his marriage had broken down and he was not living with his son.

“It's such a powerful poem, and the feelings that it evokes take me back to that time, and the audience can really feel the emotion, as it was the hardest time ever, waking up in a house without my son," he tells The Mirror.

Touring the UK with Henry Normal, co-writer of The Royle Family and producer of Gavin & Stacey, the poem also reminds him why he found the charity Families Needs Fathers (FNF). FNF is marking its 50th anniversary this week with a House of Lords celebration hosted by Lord David Blunkett, who, like Nigel, is a patron.

Lord Blunkett has experienced a custody battle, and Nigel turned to FNF - which campaigns for shared parenting as the best solution for the child post-separation - during two divorces and for help with arranging custody of his son.

Advocating to keep families out of court wherever possible, FNF is now changing its name to Both Parents Matter to be more inclusive.

Speaking of his divorces, Nigel says: "It was the hardest time ever, really, but I do get satisfaction from managing to talk about it, not in a self-pitying or angry way, and it is perhaps synchronicity that the tour coincides with the 50th anniversary of the organisation."

On good terms now with his ex-wives and his sons, Stanley, 36, and Harvey, 25, he is a proud grandfather and happily married to his third wife, Roberta Green, a therapist. Together once before, they met in 1978 and split in 1986.

He was just 25 when he became a stepdad to her children, then 12 and 10, and he became a grandfather at 30.

Nigel found it a “bit much.” They separated, and he married again twice before reuniting with Roberta and marrying again in 2013.

He said: “We cannot believe our luck that it’s still working, it’s just amazing.”

Going from being an understudy in Evita when they met, to superstardom playing Neil meant “a massive change” for their original relationship.

Nigel describes “suddenly having to crawl out the back window to get out the house due to fans outside” because of the huge success of The Young Ones.

But it was his split from his wife Anna Leigh, his son Stanley’s mother, who he was with from 1989 to 1995, that led him to FNF.

Moving countries with Stanley after she remarried, Nigel only saw him during school holidays and was horrified to find that the main custody of a child was almost automatically awarded to the mother.

He joined forces with FNF to try and change the landscape and help highlight the need for fathers to be treated better, saying: “It’s very easy to simplify the parental issue into ‘men’ and ‘women’, but it’s important to acknowledge that step-parents can be very important. We can’t divide it into these binary roles”

Lobbying with FNF in the early 90s to get the law changed, he adds: “At a marriage therapy session, they assumed I had left home.

“I didn’t leave home. Everyone assumed that the man would walk out. Even my ex-father-in-law said I should leave. But why would that be good for my boy?

“It was a tough time, Sunday nights were the worst. Everything becomes difficult, especially time-keeping in my job when I work all sorts of hours.

“I couldn’t go to a judge and say I had someone who could pick him up. “

In 1999, Nigel married actress Frankie Park, and they had a son Harvey, but they also divorced.

Fortunately, attitudes toward fathers had improved.

“Our lobbying worked. The landscape has changed greatly.” says Nigel, who likens talking about his divorces on stage to “exposure therapy.”

Talking of his tour, he adds: “We tell anecdotes about wives and our families as well as our comedy careers. It’s really not what I was brought up to do. I’ve hidden behind characters.

“So, to actually get up and talk about my life on stage is a really big challenge for me.”

Just back from a holiday with his step-grandchildren from his wife’s family, he adds: “The four grandsons are the same age as my son.

“It’s quite complicated. My younger son used to love saying, when he was about eight, to my grandaughter from my stepdaughter, ‘I’m your uncle.’ An eight-year-old uncle, and they were in their 20s!”

It’s just the kind of loving, blended family The Young Ones’ hippy Neil would have approved of.

BPM Patron Lord David Blunkett, says: "There is nothing more traumatic than a breakup, with all the raw emotions and often bitterness that accompany it.

"It’s critical to always put children first and to avoid the idea that separated parents create ‘single parent’ families.

“Joint care and responsibility means exactly what it says, and enabling that to happen has been the key function and central message of Families Need Fathers for half a century.”

'I don't know what I would have done'

AS David Dunne glances at a cherished photograph of his beloved daughters Aoife and Alannah as youngsters, tears fill his eyes.

He returns to the dark time when he was stuck in the Family Court system, trying to get proper access following divorce.

Thankfully, the trio are now happily reunited and fully part of each other's lives.

David, 67, says he owes everything to Families Needs Fathers. He, Aoife, 31, and Alannah, 33, will tell their story to MPs, Lords, and senior figures in the Family Court system at the charity’s 50th anniversary event at The House of Lords on Wednesday.

David says of FNF, which has helped over 120,000 children over the last half-century, has 32,000 service users per year, and has 33 support meetings per month: “Without them, I don’t know what I would have done. FNF was a lifeline. I remember going to a meeting and just sobbing.”

Supported and helped by the charity, now chairman of one of the London branches, he has been involved with FNF for more than 20 years, and he and his daughters regularly speak on their behalf.

David had been married for 13 years when his wife asked for a divorce.

“I took it very badly and had a nervous breakdown and was in hospital for six weeks,” he says.

Just eight and 10 then, his girls visited until he says: “I got a letter to say it wasn’t appropriate for the children to be visiting me in the hospital, and the visits stopped.”

Post hospital, his contact - every other weekend for a few hours - was supervised by friends and involved him travelling for miles to see them.

“It was hell, I had gone from being a dad who saw his children all the time to having to navigate a very complex court system which I felt was biased against fathers,” he says.

Moving closer by, after two years, he was granted unsupervised access every other weekend and for half the school holidays.

Eventually, the courts ruled and David got the judge to write to his children confirming no one had a right to tell them they could or could not see him - something he thanks FNF for.

His daughter Aoife recalls her dealings with Cafcass – the Courts and Family Courts Advisory and Support Service - as “manipulative” and anxiety-inducing.

She says: “We just wanted to live with mum and see dad whenever we wanted to.

“Not until the very last hearing did anyone ask us what we wanted. If anything can change in the Family Courts, it should be to ask the children what they want.”

Now remarried to Chamila, David has retired to Ireland.

Aoife continues: “I’m so grateful that dad did fight for us and we are all in each others lives today."

• For help from Both Parents Matter (formerly Families Need Fathers) go to www.bothparentsmatter.org.uk

• Nigel Planer is now on tour, with tickets available from edgestreetlive.com/nigel-planer