EastEnders icon’s terrifying near death experience almost put him behind bars
EastEnders legend Perry Fenwick has opened up about his terrifying near-death experience as a child which nearly landed him in prison.
The Billy Mitchell star is known for his cheeky antics on set, but it’s fair to say the actor took things too far during one dangerous weekend.
On Tuesday (July 25), the soap star appeared on Kathy Burke’s podcast Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake where the BBC star discussed his own brush with death as a teenager.
READ MORE:EastEnders' original Dotty Cotton star looks totally different to skimpy bikini bra
When asked about his most terrifying near-death experience, the dad-of-three revealed he fell off a 30ft bridge near his house that left his fighting for his life.
He told the comic: “I fell off a bridge. We used to have an iron bridge near where I lived, and you used to have to do this dare where you walked over the arch of this bridge.
“I had a wobble, fell off of it, and it was about twenty-five to thirty feet.
“There was a little stream running underneath it with these mud banks next to it and luckily for me someone had got into DIY early by removing some of the railway sleepers, otherwise as this was in the 60’s, if I would have hit one of them, that would have been it.
“I went right the way through Kath, and I landed in the mud bank, and it was so soft that I literally just went squelch.”
After he survived the landing, Perry decided to pretend to be dead in an attempt to get the kiss of life from the girl he fancied.
The actor went on: “I could hear the kids who had dared me, my mates, and this young girl who I fancied at the time; I was only about ten or eleven. As I’m lying there, in that millisecond, guess what I did? I played dead.
“I decided, even at that age the actor in me just wanted to see what they thought of me.”
But his plan to steal a smooch from the lucky lady immediately backfired after the kids scrambled to help him by calling the nearby prison.
He went on: “I stayed there, and I could hear them all going ‘He’s not moving, call the police, no we aren’t going to call the police, we’ll have to go to prison’.
“I could hear them getting closer and closer but only so far, and I’m waiting for the girl to talk. Then someone said, ‘Is he dead?’, and I was thinking, ‘Come on, one of you say something nice, at least be concerned!’.
Have you joined Threads? Follow Daily Star to keep up to date on all things showbiz here.
The star went on to reveal that his near-death experience got the opposite reaction to what he was hoping for.
The soap star confessed: “Then the girl that I really fancied just went ‘throw a stone at him’. So, I’m lying there waiting for this kiss of life from this girl, and the next thing I get is a stone in the back of my head.”
It didn't take long before Perry pulled himself up off the ground and awkwardly laughed off the terrifying experience.
For more of the latest showbiz and TV news from the Daily Star, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.
- Eastenders
- BBC