We grew up on the streets and my dad and brothers did jail time… I helped them with burglaries from age 4, says Sid Owen
HE grew up in a criminal family where his dad and brothers served time and even his mum was a petty thief - but acting saved Sid Owen from following in their footsteps.
Now the former EastEnders star, 51, has had his first taste of life behind bars after being locked up with violent cons for a new Channel 4 show.
Banged Up, which airs from Tuesday October 31, sees seven celebrities jailed in the decommissioned Victorian jail, HMP Shrewsbury, for a week.
The famous faces - including Friday Night Dinner star Tom Rosenthal, disgraced Tory MP Neil Parish, Gogglebox star Marcus Luther, singer HRVY, journalist Peter Hitchens and cabinet minister Johnny Mercer - share cells with reformed murderers, gangsters and drug smugglers in a crowded wing where the constant threat of violence hangs in the air.
Londoner Sid, whose dad David Sutton was jailed for life for armed robbery when he was a young boy, says he wanted to take part in the social experiment to understand what his family members went through.
“I grew up as a petty thief because I had three older brothers and there was violence, thieving, burglary, robberies,” he says.
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“Without acting I would have definitely done a prison sentence. That was all I knew.
“It was definitely an eye opener for me to see it from the other side and it was so sad to think what my family went through, coming to terms with being banged up for so many hours a day.
“It can send you a little bit crazy. It did feel very real and very scary.”
Burglar at four
In the gritty four-parter, Sid jokes about his poverty-stricken childhood, saying: “We grew up poor but then we didn't really want for anything because we used to nick it.”
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But life was far from a joke for young Sid, who lost his mum to cancer at the age of seven and had no contact with his abusive dad, who left when he was six.
Helping his older brothers commit burglaries from the age of four, because he was small enough to squeeze through skylights, he watched two of his three siblings descend into a spiral of crime.
Oldest Mark, who tragically died last year, was “in and out of prison for theft”.
He rarely speaks to Darren, now 54, who was jailed for eight years, in 2010, for his part in a drug ring which smuggled £1million of cocaine into the UK.
We grew up poor but then we didn't really want for anything because we used to nick it
Sid Owen
Sid's third brother, Scott, managed to avoid a life of crime and is settled with his family in Cornwall where he works as a chef.
“My oldest brother, unfortunately, had a long drug history,” he says.
“I’ve tried to help both my brothers over the years but there’s only so far you can go. I was like the boring one who was always going ‘Why did you do it?'
“I even bought my brothers businesses 20 years ago to try and keep them on the straight and narrow.
“But I think you get the taste for that life. It's easy, quick money but as quick as you get it, the quicker it goes out. It's a vicious circle.”
Drug tragedy
Sid, whose dad was a violent alcoholic, grew up on the streets after the death of his mum and took up acting after being inspired by a screening of Bugsy Malone.
He eventually studied at the Anna Scher Theatre School and landed the role of Ricky Butcher in EastEnders at 16.
But their tragic start in life had a traumatic effect on the four siblings.
”My mum died when I was seven and I never knew my dad,” Sid says. “Until last year. I didn't have an actual picture of him in my mind, so of course it affects you.
“My eldest brother probably took it all worse than I did. I was too young and I thought ‘You're on your own. Get on with it.’
“Luckily I had a lot of loving people around me, not necessarily family, but family friends who looked after me and saved me.
“But Mark went down the drugs route and was in and out of prison.
“I can empathise with it because that's what people do to block things out.
"Deep down, he was hurting. He tried to take his own life at least 10 times. He never got over the death of my mum.”
Terrifying ordeal
Oddly, Sid’s own taste of prison life has some amusing moments for viewers with inmates greeting him with a chorus of “Rick-aaay” - Bianca’s famous cry from EastEnders - and the actor revealing he never wears underwear during the humiliating strip search.
In another scene his cellmate, money launderer Reece McCoy, imparts the gruesome tale of an inmate who was attacked with a bucket of boiling water, sugar and oil, revealing: “I’ve never seen anything like it, his face was bubbling,” before casually asking a shell-shocked Sid: “Fancy an apple?”
Guarded by real ex-prison officers and presided over by former governor Clare Pearson, the celebrity prisoners are banged up, two to a cell, in HMP Shrewsbury, which was shut in 2007.
The reformed ex-cons were asked to behave as they did on their real-life stretches.
One huge lag squares up to Sid the moment he arrives and tells him: “I’m gonna be your worst nightmare,” and as the cells close on his first night, another yells: “If anyone touches his bum before me, they’re dead.”
The atmosphere is menacing and Sid’s fear is etched across his face throughout the show.
“I was genuinely terrified, especially in the first couple of days,” he says. "It affects your psyche, with all the shouting and screaming, the aggression and people throwing things.
“As one of the ex-cons says in the show, habitual criminals go in and ‘put their prison head on’. It’s dog eat dog and it's all about survival. It’s terrifying.”
At one point Sid attempts to make a run for it, but is nabbed as soon as he gets through an outer door into the exercise yard.
“I was probably the worst escapee ever,” he chuckles. “But to be honest, I just wanted five minutes to myself. It was so overwhelming.”
One of the hardest things was being away from 20-month-old daughter Skye, who he shares with partner Victoria Shores, 43.
“I love being a new dad,” he says. “I spend a hell of a lot of time with my child, which is something I never had, so I want to make up for that, in a sense. It was hard being away from my little one."
Locked up for Father’s Day, Sid gets emotional after being handed a card and photos from home, and he reveals that was one of his lowest moments.
"That was so difficult,” he says. “I want to spend every minute I can with Skye. When I put her to bed, I look forward to getting her up in the morning so it was hard."
Sid and Victoria - who has two children by a previous partner - first dated over 20 years ago but rekindled their romance after reconnecting on Facebook and got engaged in 2021.
The actor says his relationship with Victoria and the birth of their daughter has helped him overcome previous mental health struggles.
“There was always something In the back of my mind, not quite ‘poor me’ but the feeling that I haven't got anyone,” he says. “But having a child and a lovely partner has given me life.”
Fractured family
Sadly Sid never repaired his relationship with his late dad, who he says only bothered with him after he found fame in 1988.
“He was never there for me growing up but when I became famous on TV and had money, then he wanted to know me,” he says. “I thought, 'No thanks, not my cup of tea'.”
Having now had a taste of the life behind bars, so familiar to his family members, Sid is more grateful than ever to have rejected a life of crime.
“It is a hostile environment,” he says. “Everyone wants something from you and you've got to be on your toes 24/7.
“The stories you hear are enough to put you off ever wanting to go to prison. After just a day or two, I desperately wanted to get out of there.
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“Thank God I took my own path and stayed out of the crime that my family and friends in the area where I grew up got into. Prison is grim, it’s definitely a place not to go back to.”
Banged Up airs from Tuesday October 31 on Channel 4 and All4.