“We love a car boot sale,” she says. “We are possibly on the move soon and I have a ridiculous amount of clothes. Alex and I had already said we are not going home with any of this, so let’s sell three items for a pound.
“We’re talking to the stallholders, people coming up buying. Then this bloke with a camera arrived. He didn’t ask, just continuously took pictures. I was like, OK, here we go. ‘Cheryl’s at a boot fair, she’s down and out.’
“Then this woman came up to the stall with two other women and a child. She said to me, ‘I’ve read your book. I couldn’t put it down.’ She took me aside. ‘We’re in a women’s refuge. They’ve given us some money to go and get some clothes.’
“I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, if there’s anything you want we’ll box it up for free.’ It was a wonderful thing. I had such a good feeling that I’d done something positive. Then you read that in the paper. They didn’t know any of that.”
Before finding fame on EastEnders, Fergison, 60, stayed in a women’s refuge in Dartford with Alex when he was a toddler and Fergison felt unsafe living with her ex-husband.
Before her marriage, Fergison had acted on the West End and TV (on an episode of ’Allo ’Allo! she was given itchy woollen trousers once worn by Ronnie Barker on Open All Hours).
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Read more:
When Alex started nursery, Fergison began acting again. Bit parts in Casualty, Little Britain and Doctor Who set the stage for her arrival on Albert Square in 2007. The role was lifechanging professionally but also personally. Co-star Bobby Davro’s dad dug into her family tree and helped reunite Fergison with her estranged father’s side of the family.
Heather became one of the soap’s most popular characters; the mystery identity of her baby’s father
a dramatic whodunnit. And then, in 2012, Heather was killed after Ben Mitchell hit her over the head with
a picture frame.
For six months previously, Fergison knew Heather was destined to die.
“I remember thinking it was a ticking time bomb, but it gave my agent lots of time to find other work. So we knew I was going to be in Celebrity Big Brother, which unfortunately was when the tax situation was found out.”
On exiting the Big Brother house, the frenzied notifications on her phone were half congratulatory, half condolatory. The accountant she and other showbusiness figures shared had defrauded his clients, leaving Fergison a massive tax bill.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Drowning in debt, in 2015, Fergison was diagnosed with womb cancer, unable to work through radiotherapy she had following a hysterectomy. Friends rallied around, including Barbara Windsor and her husband Scott Mitchell, who covered her mortgage and bills for a couple of months.
An actor’s life has a feast and famine rhythm, Fergison says. “People think, you’re on the television, you’ve got loads of money coming in. Mechanics try to rip you off. They don’t know I’ve got a car mechanics course. Yes, it seems a lot of money, but it only lasts the length of the job and it’s got to last a) until you get your next job, or b) through something like Covid.
“I often get asked, ‘Oh, what you doing shopping in Aldi or Lidl?’ Well, why are you here? It’s cheap. I’ve not got a Marks & Spencer’s budget. I might have gone in and got a meal deal, but I’ve never done a weekly shop in M&S.”
In March 2024, with years of debt accumulated, Fergison was broke and broken. She went to Citizens Advice. Finding that she couldn’t feed herself or even her dog, she was led to an adjoining food bank.
“It was like a sort of Willy Wonka dream walking through the door,” Fergison recalls. “These lovely people did not judge. Some knew who I was, some didn’t give a monkeys. I was treated with dignity. They gave me food, a little chocolate as a treat and a bunch of daffodils. It was the flowers that hit my heart, it just made me feel like I was a person again.”
Fergison has written a book, Behind the Scenes, in part to break the stigma for the millions of people in the UK struggling to hold things together. There’s no shame – anyone could need support no matter their background or circumstances.
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
After the book was finished, another setback hit earlier this year. She suffered a stroke in May, which initially left her unable to walk.
“It takes three months plus to get benefits properly sorted so the Stroke Association went to food banks, got in touch with utility companies to explain what had happened,” Fergison says.
Her son became her main carer, and recovery continues. “My walking is getting better but it’s still slow. My speech hasn’t changed, so I’m still giving people a headache!”
The stairs in her flat are hard to handle, hence the proposed move that led to the car boot sale. For EastEnders fans, there’s a chance to pick up old scripts that Fergison is selling online. Her efforts to get by have drawn the typical negative comments that thrive online, but life as an actor is good preparation for that.
“You have to have rhino skin as performers, artists, entertainers. You have rejection and people being nasty to you. You have to be able to go: I don’t care what you like or whether you like it or not. I’m doing it. This is what I enjoy.
“It’s the way you deal with trolls, the way you deal with people in your life who are soaking up your time and energy. I’m not your sponge. I’m not wiping up your crap, matey. Whatever you’ve got in your life going on, keep it to yourself.”
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Her stroke means that she’s having to sit out panto season (she usually plays a fairy godmother) but jobs are lined up for next year, a 17-date run of the play The Life of Riley, and she has a regular gig at her friend’s Chinese restaurant hosting karaoke nights as well as their New Year’s Eve party.
Fergison has a maxim she lives by: “Is my cup half full or half empty? I look at that and I go, do you know what? I’m lucky to have a cup.”
I’m your fan
Heather in EastEnders was famously a George Michael fanatic. It turns out George Michael was also a fan of Cheryl. The two became friends. “George was the loveliest, most wonderful person I knew.”
Heather named her son George Michael Trott. Was he happy about that? “Oh yes, absolutely. He was a great EastEnders fan.”
Heather was killed in 2012 but her last appearance in the soap came in the episode where Dot Cotton closes up her launderette for the last time, finding a tape with Heather’s voice on it, where Last Christmas was referenced. It aired on Christmas Eve 2016, the day before George Michael died.
Behind the Scenes by Cheryl Fergison is out now (Reach, £22).
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more.
Change a vendor’s life this Christmas.
Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – or support online with a vendor support kit or a subscription – and help people work their way out of poverty with dignity.
