Actor and singer Michael Crawford has spent four decades helping sick children and their families but he reveals it was his own child’s brush with death that inspired him.
Actor Michael Crawford has told how the most “frightening time” of his life inspired him to spend 40 years helping sick children and their families in the UK.
The ‘Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em’ star spoke to the Mirror as he attended a groundbreaking ceremony as the President of the Sick Children’s Trust.
Work has started on the charity’s 11th ‘Home from Home’ for families of sick children. The latest one, based in Bradford, is set to open next year.
More than £2 million of the £3 million fundraising target has been raised so far but they still need more help. Michael, the original Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, travelled to Bradford to help the Sick Children’s Trust and Bradford Hospitals Charity fundraising drive.
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Explaining why he got involved almost four decades ago, Michael, now 84, told of how his six month old daughter was struck down by meningitis.
“For most parents, I would think it is the most frightening thing of their lifetime. The child that you’ve created is between life and death. It’s something that never ever leaves you and you become so sympathetic to anyone else that it happens to. That’s what’s drawn me all the way through.”
Explaining what happened to his little girl, he said: “I think it began early in my life, when I was married to Gabrielle, we had a little girl, Emma and then Lucy.” After returning from Broadway, he was doing a stint on West End when six month old Emma was taken ill.
“Emma contracted meningitis. She was staying with her grandparents at the time who were down in Portsmouth so she went to a hospital in Portsmouth. It stayed with me, you had nowhere to stay anywhere near the hospital.
“My wife obviously had to stay next to the bed every minute because of the danger of meningitis. She was just six months old and thank God everything was all right. “ He said it took his daughter six months to recover, adding: “It was a long hard. Climb. But that little girl had her 60th birthday last week.”
Fighting back tears, he explains: “So it happens to so many, and it’s so sudden. When you fall in love, you get married and you have a child, you hope and pray that they’re going to be a healthy child…but when it doesn’t turn out that way…”
Emotional, he adds: “I can’t really talk about it because it just upsets me, it’s very upsetting. “ A year later, after Michael became the President of the Sick Children’s Trust, they opened their first ‘home from home’.
“I’m in a way not looking forward to going around the wards today, seeing those parents standing next to that bed, what they’re going through. And sometimes it’s for years that they go through this suffering.”
But he says he is grateful that Frank Spencer “crossed my path” and sees it as “a gift” which has allowed him to help these parents. Michael has nothing but praise for the NHS describing the staff as “extraordinary”.
“They are wonderful, the same little baby Emma when she was at six weeks and not well in New York, she had a temperature and I took her to a hospital there on our first day and they wouldn’t take her because we didn’t have any money and any insurance and she had a high temperature. I remember I had to carry her to another hospital.
“And before I could get treatment I found the number of my Producer and we got access to some money to pay for them to take her into the hospital.
“But that was again, something that doesn’t leave your head. So the NHS, there’s a heart and soul to it. We should be so grateful and so supportive of it. That’s not being political, it’s just humane.”
Michael was recently honoured by one of his biggest fans, President Trump
Michael doesn’t like to get ‘political’ even after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Kennedy Centre presented by Donald Trump.
“I was able to take Emma and Lucy with me. I took them as a special treat.” He said it had been the first time they’d been together on their own since they were teenagers.
“It was the best five days I’ve had in a number of years. We had such good fun.” When asked if Trump behaved himself, he said: “He was actually amazing to us.
“He was playing my music the whole time. He’s got Kiss, George Strait and Gloria Gaynor, there and he’s playing me over the loudspeaker. They said ‘yes, you’re on the playlist in the White House’ and you’re also on ‘Air Force One’ “. Trump, he said, was particularly fond of The Music of the Night and Phantom of the Opera. “
As for Michael’s favourite role of all time, while he talks of an “emotional” bond with Frank Spencer, because “a family could sit and watch it” – it was Phantom that “changed my life”.
About the TV character adored by the nation, he said: “There was a gentleness and a love coming from him, so I mean, I adored that about him,” he said.
“I mean my poor daughters had to endure going to school while he was in full flow and I’m afraid one of them got rather bullied about it.”
“But Phantom changed my entire life. It just changed my life and gave me the ability to go out as me in concert and sing with the emotion I loved to use, with lyrics of songs that I loved.
“Because we’ve all suffered rejection, we’ve all suffered pain, we’ve all suffered loss. It’s universal if we can sing about it or talk about it and they relate to it. And that gave me the opportunity to do that. “
His favourite leading lady was also easy for Michael, who doesn’t hesitate to mention Dale Kristien who he toured the world with performing Phantom. But he doesn’t forget his beloved Betty, who was played by Michelle Dotrice as they “still talk every week”.
Jane Featherstone from the Sick Children’s Trust said of their newest home from home in Bradford: “It was very much needed and we’re very fortunate here in Bradford that there’s a plot of land on the site very close to the neonatal unit.
“So parents and families will be seconds away from their poorly baby and they’ll be able to sleep and rest and have a family meal in the home from home knowing that they’re just metres away from their baby in hospital, which is obviously really important to them. “
“We desperately need to raise another £800,000 to make this project happen. So every donation will really, really count.” If you can help http://sickchildrenstrust.org/bradfordappeal
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