Bobby Brazier’s dad Jeff speaks about him shedding his mum aged 5

Memo to Strictly dads in all places: deliver a tissue. Jeff Brazier wanted just a few when his son Bobby took to probably the most well-known dancefloor in Britain on Saturday night time, performing a routine devoted to, and impressed by, his late mom Jade Goody.

For Jeff, it wasn’t a brand new factor to see his lanky son (‘nope, no concept the place he will get the peak as a result of it wasn’t from me or Jade,’ he says) carry out. It was new to see his boy share his story of grief with the nation, although.

‘I used to be nervous for him anyway, since you simply are, however I used to be so apprehensive as a result of Bobby hasn’t essentially shared his expertise of loss publicly earlier than,’ Jeff, 44, admits.

‘I anxious it might be overwhelming. Also, that it might find yourself mentioning some unresolved grief he had. I anxious that he’d discover it an excessive amount of. Grief is ugly, however to observe him be capable to translate it into this comprehensible, stunning factor, was wonderful.’

What a routine, too. EastEnders actor and mannequin Bobby, 20, has been one of many stand-out stars of Strictly, his infinite limbs, vitality and pout reminding viewers of a younger Mick Jagger. But this routine, so stuffed with emotion, moved among the judges to tears. Ditto his dad, within the viewers.

‘Oh I knew I’d cry, nevertheless it was nonetheless overwhelming,’ Jeff tells me. ‘The beautiful Dan Walker [the TV presenter and former Strictly contestant] was sitting behind me and he tapped me on the shoulder at one level and handed me a tissue. It was a really emotional factor, given the circumstances.’

Younger Strictly viewers would have wanted to be reminded of these circumstances, older ones much less so. For again within the Noughties, Jade Goody was a family identify, somebody everybody knew of, even when they weren’t a fan. One of Britain’s first actuality megastars, Jade –— loud, uncompromising, laugh-a-minute — appeared on Big Brother in 2002, catapulting herself, and people round her, into the limelight.

She and Jeff — who was additionally a actuality star, having appeared on the present Shipwrecked the earlier 12 months — have been the truth Posh and Becks of their day, and in 2003 Bobby was born into the ‘biz.

He appeared on his first OK! cowl when he was only a month previous, his brother Freddie arriving the next 12 months, additionally into the glare of digicam flashes.

And so it continued, even when Jade and Jeff break up in 2004. Then in 2009, when Bobby was solely 5, Jade died after a much-documented battle with cervical most cancers, altering her household’s trajectory ceaselessly.

Overnight, Jeff grew to become a single dad — a task he had by no means anticipated and for which, he admits right now, ‘there was no guidebook’.

How did he do? Well, the proof is all the time within the pudding. He appears as happy as punch that Strictly viewers have taken Bobby to their hearts, applauding what a stunning, respectable and, dare we are saying it, well-balanced younger man he appears to have develop into.

Even Anton Du Beke mentioned, via the tears, that if his six-year-old son grew as much as be a younger man like Bobby he can be very proud – which certainly suggests Jeff ought to get the glitterball equal of a parenting prize.

Not but, he’s fast to say.

‘I do watch him and I believe ‘my job is finished’. He’s a pleasure to observe, not simply on the dancefloor, as a result of he is obtained this recent innocence, and but he is assured, glowing even. On some ranges — particularly in terms of him modelling, appearing, or dancing — I believe ‘I am unable to train this child something extra’.

‘But then, as a dad or mum, you by no means cease having to be the one to tug them up. I believe what I’m realising is that your job isn’t over.

‘When the boys have been little — and I had a extra naïve concept of parenting — I had this concept that once you obtained them to 18, somebody would wave a chequered flag and say ‘accomplished’, however really it isn’t like that, is it?’

He tells me, fairly hilariously, that what he has discovered about parenting is ‘that it is a bit like baking a cake, however with out anybody ever telling you that you simply will not have all of the substances. The youngsters could have lobbed some issues in themselves, so you actually haven’t got that a lot management. You simply should do your finest and hope that it does not come out melting or burnt, or with bits falling off.’

It’s exhausting to fathom how tough it should have been for Jeff. It fell to him to clarify to his sons that their mom had died. She paved the way in which after all, sharing with them ‘the story that we had agreed was finest for them to listen to’, which concerned Mummy ‘changing into a giant brilliant star that they’d be capable to see within the sky’. On the day she died, in March 2009, there was, by probability, a single star within the sky.

Jeff says he walked the boys outdoors ‘and there have been few phrases required — they knew who the star was’.

Jade was clearly in Jeff’s ideas on Saturday night time. ‘There was a degree within the routine the place Dianne [Buswell, Bobby’s professional partner] was on Bobby’s shoulder, and it actually obtained to me. I noticed her as Jade. I’m undecided whether or not the choreographer designed it as this, however what I noticed was Jade on Bobby’s shoulder. It’s a stunning thought, is not it, that when somebody we love dies, they’re nonetheless there, guiding us. We all want angels.’

Then once more, he additionally noticed Jade in Bobby on that dancefloor. We discuss how Strictly viewers have commented that Bobby appears an ideal, and uncanny, mix of his mum and his dad.

‘Aren’t all youngsters the proper mixture of their mother and father? It’s exhausting for me to see myself in him — though I’ve seen a few of my mannerisms come via. Looks-wise, he is positively extra of his mum. He’s obtained her profitable smile.’

Jeff’s first main choice after Jade’s loss of life was to take the boys to stay in Adelaide, Australia, reasoning that some years out of the media highlight can be useful. And then? Well, he sums it up right now as ‘I muddled via, studying as I went, and I’m nonetheless studying’, nevertheless it’s clearly vital that he additionally educated as a grief counsellor.

In 2017, he wrote a guide referred to as The Grief Survival Guide, which incorporates some element about how he managed to manage when Jade died.

It’s a sobering learn, and an astounding one once you come to it straight from watching Bobby on Strictly. Some of it reads just a little like a down-to-earth parenting information, too, which is astonishing on condition that Jeff’s personal background was fairly sophisticated.

He by no means knew his organic dad, a skipper who was captain of the Marchioness, the pleasure boat that tragically sank on the Thames in 1989, killing 51 individuals together with him. Jeff was ten and didn’t have a relationship together with his father. As a toddler he lived for some time together with his mum in a ladies’s refuge.

In individual, Jeff is a curious mixture of showbiz (all white enamel and woo-woo positivity) and sage. He’s fronting a Christmas marketing campaign for NatWest about being fraud-savvy.

‘My prime objective in life has been to guard my household, and that is all about that. It’s one thing I felt very strongly about supporting. We know it is all too straightforward to fall sufferer to those scams,’ he says.

‘Whatever age victims are — and that is one thing that impacts kids and aged individuals — it is about consciousness. Some of us do not see it coming and we aren’t geared up to take care of it.’

Filming the marketing campaign, which includes a board recreation, All Mod Cons, that may be performed in chosen NatWest shops to lift consciousness of contemporary monetary scams, concerned working together with his youthful son Freddie, 19, who appears to be one other pure on digicam. Jeff’s personal profession — he has starred in a number of actuality reveals, and in presenting roles — was all the time going to take a success when he grew to become a full-time dad, he agrees. ‘I did not do it consciously, however with hindsight what I did was make myself smaller, professionally, emotionally, socially to offer myself the very best probability of coping.

‘The first rule is that it’s a must to be current when your youngsters want you. That’s not a lot the case now, nevertheless it definitely was.’

He says he determined from the off that he would speak brazenly about Jade. Indeed, when the boys have been rising up that they had a rule that on the fifteenth of each month (there was no specific motive for this date) they’d have a ‘Mother’s Day’, the place they’d select one thing to do to have a good time Jade’s life.

The rule was that it needed to be one thing enjoyable — ‘like bowling, go-karting or trampolining’ — fairly than visiting a grave.

One of Jade’s dying needs was that she wished her boys to have the schooling, and the alternatives, she by no means had. All the (extremely paid) interviews she gave as she was dying have been to fund their non-public education. Jeff says right now that this was one thing he discovered tough — not least as a result of each boys struggled at non-public college. Bobby has spoken of being bullied, as a result of he wasn’t from an ‘elite’ background. Jeff really withdrew Freddie from non-public college for a number of years after he was recognized with ADHD. He admits this was probably the most tough elements. 

‘I did respect Jade’s needs, and honoured them, even after I questioned them,’ he says. ‘There was a interval the place it wasn’t working for Freddie as a result of being in a personal college is the least forgiving atmosphere there may be.’

Freddie hung out in a mainstream college, earlier than Jeff discovered him a ‘small Christian college, which labored for him’.

‘Honouring Jade’s needs have been all the time on the forefront of my thoughts, however I additionally knew that if Jade was sitting there subsequent to me, she’d even have seen that we would have liked to suppose outdoors the field.’

There have clearly been parenting challenges. Although Bobby and Freddie haven’t got many recollections of their mum, her place of their life has by no means been in query.

In 2018, when Jeff married PR govt Kate Dwyer, Bobby gave the very best man’s speech, calling his dad his ‘hero’ and revealing that he hadn’t precisely been massively welcoming of his new associate.

‘This is a bit awkward, however to chop an extended story quick, I did not actually price you to start with,’ he advised Kate, in entrance of the assembled friends.

‘But now I’m so glad I can genuinely inform you I really like you. You being round has made issues lots simpler for us boys, and we admire you a large number.’

In his guide, Jeff was candid concerning the ‘slowly, slowly’ method to introducing a associate into his son’s lives. Even although, he explains, it was ‘simpler’ for him as a result of he and Jade had not been a pair when she died, there have been nonetheless challenges.

He had been seeing Kate for six months earlier than he even launched her to them, and it was 5 years earlier than she moved in. Interestingly, he revealed that Bobby specifically had robust views on the usage of the ‘stepmum’ tag, insisting it was solely OK to make use of it as soon as the pair had been married.

‘I’ve all the time reiterated to them that no associate of mine, irrespective of how dedicated, will ever take the place of their mum of their life.’

Last 12 months, Jeff and Kate separated for a interval, however are actually very a lot again collectively.

‘That six months gave a perspective that we might use to restore issues,’ he says, candidly.

‘And I’m happy with the respect we confirmed one another as we tried to remain married and make the wedding work. It’s a great instance to my kids too, I believe.

‘At the tip of the day, your kids simply need you to be comfortable. I keep in mind splitting up with somebody years in the past and worrying that the boys have been going to be actually upset as a result of they have been fairly shut, however finally, they only wished me to be comfortable.’

He says he has anxious about being overprotective, due to what occurred to their mum, however has ‘discovered the exhausting means’ that kids want their dad to be a ‘father, fairly than a finest pal’, including: ‘I’m agency on them needing boundaries.’

He confirms that on the day Bobby was approached by a modelling company, round 4 years in the past, he had taken him to Costa for them to have a severe chat about Bobby having been suspended from college. He will not say what the suspension was for, however suffice to say he was livid.

‘But I did not go in there shouting. I’m really nice in a disaster — fairly calm when different individuals is perhaps shouting, so I considered it and that is why I’d taken him to Costa, to sit down and speak rationally about it.

‘I wished him to be reflective of his behaviour, for him to ‘realise he had accomplished one thing improper. But it was at this level that somebody got here as much as him and mentioned ‘Do you need to be a mannequin?’ I assumed ‘Not now! This shouldn’t be good timing. Can you come again later, mate’.’

I’m undecided it might ever have been his selection for Bobby to mannequin, or develop into an actor — as he did when he joined EastEnders final 12 months. Was there a concern there?

‘There was. I used to be anxious that him going into the trade was one thing to be fearful of, as a result of his mum and I did not all the time have experiences that have been wonderful. It’s fairly a tricky place, fairly unforgiving, and you are feeling apprehensive on your kids about that.

‘There are completely some issues I might inform Bobby about, however on the identical time he is come into it with such a freshness and virtually innocence. He’s adept, too, a pure performer.’

He sounds stunned, however factors out that Bobby was by no means remotely showbizzy. ‘He was all the time a quiet child. He preferred his personal time and area — then the following factor I knew he was on EastEnders.

‘He was type of on an accelerated path. Most mother and father watch their youngsters get a primary job making the tea or one thing, getting junior roles, and constructing as much as a place of duty. He’s gone from 0 to 60 very quickly.’

As he has together with his dancing on Strictly. Did he get his strikes from his dad? ‘No, I can positively say he did not study something about dance from me,’ he laughs. ‘I am unable to take any credit score for that one.’

n Jeff Brazier and son Freddie star in a NatWest Christmas video to launch a board recreation elevating consciousness of frequent scams. All Mod Cons is obtainable to play in choose branches: natwestgroup.com/news-and-insights/latest-stories/financial-capability-and-learning/2023/nov/fighting-fraud-this-christmas.html