MY SON'S 911 IN A MILLION; Pop star Jimmy left fiancee and baby ... then gave her away at her wedding.
IT'S not good for a pop star's image. His ex-girlfriend describes him as her best- friend and he even agrees to give her away at her wedding to another man. Then he goes and sets up a trust fund for their child. And he insists on calling his family every day. But that is exactly what 911 singer Jimmy Constable has done. Admittedly, first he left his girlfriend Bernadette Robertson to move to Scotland to follow his music career. She had been the woman he lost his virginity to, and during a nine-year relationship they had their son, Scott. But leaving his family behind - in 1994 - is where the bad-boy behaviour stops in its tracks. And even this Bernadette had feared would happen for years before. Bernadette, a beautician, first met Jimmy in the playground of their school in Runcorn, Cheshire. But she feels now that they probably fell in love too young. Bernadette, 26, said: "He was my first boyfriend to last more than two days. I was 13 and he was 14 when we met. We were both young and naive. "Although he lived only five minutes up the road, I didn't know Jimmy well. But then that year he sent me a Christmas card out of the blue. "I thought he was cute and, on the spur of the moment, I grabbed him in the corridor after a PE lesson and said `Put some more kisses on the card'. "He'd been playing football and had his shorts on. He had lovely legs and I guess I couldn't resist. "I didn't really have a crush on him but he was a good footballer - the best in the class - and looked great that day." Bernadette added: "The first time we went out was on December 11. We arranged to meet at the local sweet shop. "We used to knock about outside with our mates, trying to get adults to buy us a can of beer. "I'd met him outside a few days before. He was supposed to be meeting a friend of mine, Vikki, whom he'd got together with a couple of times. "But I knew she was out meeting someone else, so I told him and, I think partly to get back at her, he asked me out instead." On the night they had arranged to meet, Bernadette deliberately turned up half an hour late. She wanted to keep him on his toes "to keep him waiting and thinking I wasn't coming". It could all easily have back-fired on her. She said: "He had bought a cheese and onion pasty - and you could smell it on his breath a mile away. I think I gave him some chewing gum and we kissed all night. "He was a great kisser and I was besotted from day one. I liked everything about him - his big puffy lips, his lovely legs. He was shy and quiet." The pair walked to and from school every day and met up at lunch time. Bernadette added: "My mother was over the moon because it was the first time that I'd ever been up early for school. "I was in the bathroom before anyone else, doing my hair and making myself look good. "We were both virgins and not at all experienced in love-making. "But we didn't hurry things and I made him wait until I was nearly 16 before I had sex with him. "I remember it well. It was lunch time and we'd sneaked into my house from school, while my mum was out. It took about three attempts and, to be honest, was a bit of an anti-climax. "From then on we used to pretend he was using my mum's sunbed. My mum thought he was in his boxer shorts concentrating on his tan, but in fact we were doing other things and actually getting tanned at the same time." Despite continuing to live apart, Jimmy proposed to Bernadette on her 16th birthday. He got down on one knee in their local park. She said yes straight away. She recalled: "My mum already knew, Jimmy had shown her the ring. "It was too big for my finger and I had to put some string around it to make it fit. He'd been saving up his pocket money and the wages he earned from his Saturday job, at Runcorn Tyres and Exhausts, to buy it." Although they planned to get married one day, they knew it would be years before they had enough money. Bernadette added: "We had a little notebook in which we wrote down all the money we'd saved and how much we needed. We worked out we probably couldn't afford it until about 2050." At the time, Jimmy thought he would become a footballer and was approached to sign as an apprentice for Wrexham. But because he would have to spend the week away from Bernadette in Wales, he turned them down and decided instead to enrol on a PE course at a local college. Bernadette said: "I wouldn't let him go and he agreed. At that stage he hadn't even considered becoming a pop star. He was a good dancer and had been in talent shows, but he decided he wanted to be a PE teacher." But after a year at college, Jimmy started to dance professionally at clubs. When he landed a role on the cult late night show The Hit Man and Her, presented by Pete Waterman, Jimmy decided to concentrate on dancing instead. At first, Bernadette started dancing for a living as well. But in 1992 she fell pregnant with their son Scott. She said: "Although we didn't take any precautions, he wasn't planned. We both had mixed feelings - we were young with careers to consider - but we always intended to keep him." From the day she went into labour on her 20th birthday, the pair's relationship started to deteriorate. She said: "I'd obviously had to give up dancing when I fell pregnant, while Jimmy was getting more and more serious about it. "It was at this point that he teamed up with Spike Dawbarn and they started doing the Liverpool Radio City roadshow around the country. He was often away from weeks on end and we simply started to drift apart." It was becoming clear to Bernadette that their lives were starting to head off in different directions. She was a devoted mother, while Jimmy's career was obviously starting to really take off. She added: "We did move in together for three months at my mum's, when Scott was a year old. But it didn't work. "It was the first time we had lived together and we realised we couldn't do it. It probably didn't help having my mum around, but we argued all the time and decided to get our own places." But the couple continued to date until 1994, when Jimmy moved to Scotland to try to break into the pop world with 911. Bernadette said: "Even then we carried on seeing each other occasionally, but we could both tell we were simply hanging on. "I found it very hard to let Jimmy go, but I knew it had to happen. I knew that if we called it off we could still remain friends. "However, even to this day, we haven't talked about splitting up." Jimmy has now become an international pop star with 911 and Bernadette has since married security company boss Paul and has a second son Ben, aged two. But she still sees Jimmy regularly and he phones her every other day. Bernadette said: "When I first met Paul I was still convinced that one day Jimmy and I would get married. "Luckily, Paul talked some sense into me. Then when I got pregnant with Ben, I phoned Jimmy and we were both in tears, not really understanding it. Now I realise we're basically just like brother and sister." The pair are still so close that Jimmy gave Bernadette away at her wedding last year. She said: "With my father dying from cancer when I was eight, it seemed only natural to ask my closest male friend. Jimmy was only too happy to do it. "He was already famous and had to fly off halfway through the evening to do a gig in London. "His record company hired a private jet so he could leave the reception at the last possible moment. "And the next day they sent a Rolls Royce to take us to the airport for our honeymoon. Jimmy was very nervous, more nervous than me about the speech and things, and he got quite drunk. "I guess we'll always be best mates and, luckily, he and Paul get on really well. In his wedding speech, Jimmy even made a special point of saying thanks to Paul for looking after me and Scott." After the recent Smash Hits Awards in London, Jimmy and Paul even stayed up half the night playing video games. Bernadette added: "A lot of people don't understand how we can still be so close after all these years. "But Jimmy says he wants us to be mates when we're pensioners and, for those who know us, we'll always be Jim and Ber." |