'My wife went through a lot with me' How Danny Dyer reinvented himself

The Herald Scotland

13-05-2025

'This is a tune that takes me back to a time when I just remember men and women jumping around and there was a lot of love in the air,' Dyer told presenter Lauren Laverne before spinning 'Playing with Knives' by Bizarre Inc. 'OK, he added, 'it might have been down to narcotics …'
It was the little details that sang here. In the wake of his appearance in Human Traffic playing a drug dealer he'd have people turning up outside his house hoping to take drugs with him. He was still living on a council estate at the time. They even nicked his dustbin once. 'And you try getting a dustbin from the council, darling,' he said to Laverne. 'It's a mission.'
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Dyer made a lot of bad calls. 'I did go off the rails for many years,' he admitted. The aforementioned drink and drugs. There was an affair. And then there was the lad's mag advice column. He didn't even write it, but they paid him two grand a week. Until the magazine published something particularly heinous under Dyer's name.
It was his success in EastEnders that gave him the space to realise he needed to change things. That something was rehab and therapy.
Now he's a husband, a father and a grandfather.
'I'm really good at it now. I was rubbish for many years. A bit like my dad was, I suppose. My wife has gone through a lot with me, I think.
'I'm very grateful that she gave me another shot. She was saying to me the other day that she's glad she did because she's got the best version of me.'
He met his wife Jo when they were both 13 and she has stuck with him through thick and a lot of thin. Listening to this I did think I'd like to hear Jo's story actually.
But Dyer was interesting because he is clearly trying to work out his ideas on what makes a man a man? Is it OK to be affectionate? Is it acceptable to be an alpha male and still wear a pink dressing gown? (That was the pitch that sold him on EastEnders, by the way.)
'Toxic masculinity is a thing,' he said at one point, 'but it's not necessarily because you're a male. It's because you're a not very nice human being.'
From masculinity to social geography. Did you know that there are still two streets in the UK named after Joseph Stalin? One in Colchester and one in Chatham, both named to commemorate the part the Soviets played in the Second World War and not changed since.
There are still two streets in the UK named after Joseph Stalin (Image: PA) That was one of the things I learned listening to Word of Mouth on Radio 4 on Sunday night.
The subject - you may have guessed - was street names.
The Open University sociolinguist Philip Seargeant was Michael Rosen's guest and what followed was a whirlwind tour that took in geography, social history and how language changes. Fast but fascinating. Word of Mouth, like Desert Island Discs, is a simple format. It's why both work so well on radio.
No mention of Gagarin Way in Lumphinnans, mind you.
A quick shout-out for A Map of the Moon (Radio 4, Sunday), which saw Siddarth Khajuria visit the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh and ask who gets to name places on the lunar surface.
Why is there a sea of tranquillity and a marsh of decay on the Moon? Blame it on a Jesuit priest called Giovanni Battista Riccioli. As one contributor noted, 'When you look at the moon now you are seeing a Catholic document frozen in the mid-1600s.'
There was, it should be noted, a chilly realpolitik about the discussions of who owns space now. 'We started the project thinking it would be about poetic imagination,' producer Eleanor McDowall told me, 'and ended it feeling like we'd made a horror movie.'
Even so, this had a lunar glitter to it, and among all the scientists and lawyers, Khajuria's son's contributions may have been the best thing about it.
Listen Out For: Conversations From a Long Marriage, Radio 4, Monday, 2.15pm
Given its starry cast (Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam) author Jan Etherington's CV and the comic durability of every episode, you might have thought the BBC might have considered Conversations From a Long Marriage for a TV transfer. As it is, it remains a reliable radio pleasure. Oh, and Irish comedian Mary Bourke has a new comedy series about being a carer starting on Radio 4 earlier in the afternoon.