The night Julie Andrews's stepfather said: I'll show you how I cuddle Mummy

11 April 2012
The Weekender

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Climb every mountain: Despite thinking she was going mad when she was 14, Dame Julie Andrews went on to become an Oscar-winning icon

In a shocking episode in her autobiography, the Oscar-winning actress described how Ted Andrews, then in his late thirties, told her he wanted to "cuddle" her.

She said she felt "trapped and claustrophobic", adding: "Something about it didn't feel right to me at all."

Dame Julie, now 72, said the incident happened when she was travelling with her stepfather, a variety entertainer billed as the Canadian Troubadour, whom she knew as Pop.

It was Ted Andrews who first noticed his stepdaughter's incredible voice and gave her singing lessons, and she went on to perform on stage with him.

They shared a one-room "digs" in 1944 - the first time they were ever alone together - while Dame Julie's mother Barbara, a music hall pianist who had married Andrews five years before, journeyed to meet them.

Dame Julie wrote: "It was uncomfortably quiet and suddenly Pop said, 'Come into bed with me and I'll keep you warm'. I replied, 'I'm fine ... I'm a bit sleepy'.

"'No, no, come on, come on,' he pressed. 'Let's have a cuddle'. Very reluctantly I climbed into bed and lay with my back to him. 'I'll show you how I cuddle with Mummy,' he said. 'Give me your feet'.

"He placed them between his legs, and I was acutely aware of his heaviness on my tiny limbs. I felt trapped and claustrophobic.

"Eventually, summoning my courage, I claimed that I was too hot and that I was going back to my own bed. To my relief and surprise he let me go.

"I was very grateful when my mother arrived the following day."

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A family affair: Dame Julie with her mother, Barbara, and stepfather, Ted Andrews, a music hall performer whom she called 'Pop' and who was the first to recognise her talent

The revelation is contained in the actress's autobiography Home, published today, which lays bare several family secrets, including that she was born of an illicit affair.

It also details another incident in October 1951, when she was 16, when her stepfather kissed her drunkenly in her bedroom in the family home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

"Suddenly he said, 'I really must teach you how to kiss properly' and kissed me full on the lips. It was a deep, moist kiss - a very unpleasant experience.

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Family: Julie Andrews with Ted Wells in 1974. She grew up believing that Mr Wells was her father. Then her mother married Variety performer Ted Andrews - and she was given his name

"Ten minutes later he came back in. I was burrowed beneath the covers, facing the wall. He leaned over me and tried to kiss me again.

"I rolled nearer the wall and mumbled, 'I'm really sleepy. Goodnight, now!'"

Dame Julie said she told her aunt and that a bolt was installed on her bedroom door to stop her stepfather, from trying to get to her again.

The actress, best-known for her prim roles in musicals such as Mary Poppins and The Sound Of Music, also described how Andrews would drink and become abusive, beating her half-brother Donald.

She adds that her mother, who died in the 1980s, several years after Ted Andrews, later suffered from depression and a "mini-breakdown", and that she feared that she herself could go insane aged 14.

"I began to hear voices in my head at night, a crazy chatter, and I worried that I might go mad," she wrote.

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