EastEnders star Shane Richie has revealed he has had therapy to deal with his temper.
The actor, who plays Alfie Moon in the BBC soap, added he wanted to steer himself away from the anger he had seen in his abusive father.
Shane told Loose Women star Kaye Adams on her podcast: “There are a couple of traits I did have which I think I got from my dad and I went to counselling to try to sort them out.
“I had a bit of a fiery temper. If things didn’t go the way I wanted them to go I’d lose my sh*t really quickly and I knew I needed to nip that in the bud.
“I’m constantly working on that. I do think about it a lot.
“I find myself thinking ‘oh God, that’s what my dad would have done, what a kn**. Come on, snap out of it, Shane, that’s not you’. He was a drunk, he was very abusive physically and verbally.
“He was constantly angry, he liked the drink – he was an angry drunk.
“Thankfully I’m not. I don’t drink any more. If I do, I’ll have half a lager.”
When Shane was a boy, he would be punched by his dad, bin man Harry, who died of cancer in 2009 aged 65. Shane, 59, said: “I loathed him. We made our peace – he died in my arms.”
He added: “When he died there was something bittersweet about it because he wanted to tell me what he wanted to say and I told him what I felt about him, so we cleared the air.
“The whole thing came full circle. It was a strange time in my life. We closed the door, but there wasn’t much love lost between us.”
He added on Kaye Adams’ podcast, How to be 60: “He thought I was gay for a long time. My dad was quite homophobic. When I was 13, I used to come back from the theatre with eyeliner and make-up.
“He wanted me to work on building sites and I fought against it. My mum was always on my side, bless her.
“When I became Alfie Moon he was quite proud of me, but he’d still always be ‘why don’t you get a proper job?’. There was an arrogance about him.”
He added that his troubles with his father damaged his relationship with his younger brother Dean.
Shane said: “I left home at 15 and cut all ties. The one regret I have was leaving my brother... When I left, he was only 11 and he got the brunt of it.
“I still have regrets. We don’t have the relationship I wish we had. I probably talk to him once or twice a year.”
Shane who has two sons – Shane Jr, 34, and Jake, 30 – with first wife Coleen Nolan, and has three kids – Mackenzie, 17, Lolita, 15, and Romani-Skye, 11, with second wife Christie Goddard, also talked about losing out on jobs as he has got older.
The all-round entertainer, who joined EastEnders in 2002, said: “In the last three years there have been jobs that have come up in musical theatre where I know I’ve been right for it, where they’ve gone ‘oh, Shane, you’d have been great at this 10 years ago. You’re just the wrong side of 50’.
“And that really hurts, because I know physically, I can still do it.”
