Dale Winton: 19 things we learned from his extraordinary autobiography. RIP Dale

Here are 19 things we learned from Dale Winton’s autobiography after the Supermarket Sweep presenter died aged 62 last week.

Most celebrity autobiographies are so dull the only bits worth looking at are the photos in the middle before you put it back on the shelf.

Not so Dale Winton’s My Story. RIP Dale, thanks for the memories.

1.

As well as suffering from chronic eczema and asthma, Dale talks about his battle with weight since childhood. When he was 10, his mother took him to a dietician in Essex, who told him he was “the fattest little boy he had ever examined”.

2.

His father died on the day of Dale’s bar mitzvah, while his mother – a Jayne Mansfield lookalike who appeared as a glamorous dolly-bird on various TV quiz shows and in numerous films – killed herself in 1976 after five years of suicide attempts.

In her suicide note she says sorry to Dale and asks him “to water the geraniums and look after the house”.

3.

While working as a DJ for the United Biscuits Network in 1976, Dale interviews the Sex Pistols at their “dirty and disgusting” rehearsal studio in Denmark Street.

Disappointingly, he writes, they were all on their best behaviour. “Sid was really quite a sweet guy then,” says Dale, although he notes that Sid Vicious ends the interview by spitting violently at the one-bar electric fire.

4.

Dale starts interviewing celebrities while working in local radio. “David Cassidy was really tiny, not particularly forthcoming and had a dodgy complexion,” he writes, with some disappointment.

Andy Williams, however, “had the most perfect teeth… his nails were also beautifully manicured and he was wearing clear nail varnish. I’d never seen a man groomed to such perfection.”

5.

While working at Radio Trent, Dale turns down the chance to be one of the first people to interview Sting and the Police. “This is not for me,” he says. “They’re obviously hard-rock anarchist types who will not go down a bundle with the housewives”.

6.

Following the cult success of Supermarket Sweep with students and stoners in the mid-90s, he is “bowled over”, if slightly baffled, to get a rapturous reception when he appears on the youth TV show The Word.

He also experiences “a wave of affection” when he is asked to put in a guest appearance at the Forum in Kentish town to introduce Saint Etienne, “the pop band which had a huge cult following among students”.

7.

He is doorstepped by tabloid journalists who tell him they have photos of him lying on a bed, in a department store, with a man. “My immediate concern was that I never look my best when I’m lying down,” he says, and asks the tabloid journalist, “Does my face look fat in the picture?”

8.

Shortly after The Sun’s TV critic Garry Bushell slags off Dale Winton’s Supermarket Sweep, Winton confronts him when both are contestants on Celebrity Squares. “I read every word in your column and have memorised most of it,” he says. “I’m left wondering one thing: does this mean a bonk is now out of the question?”

It was, apparently “the beginning of a friendship… I couldn’t have been more pleased when Garry asked me to be godfather to his lovely daughter, Jenna.”

9.

When presenting Pets Win Prizes, owners were asked to identify their own pets in contests entitled “That’s my cat” or “That’s my dog” and so on. A round named at owners of cockerels was initially called “That’s my cock”, until producers objected. Dale successfully managed to get it renamed “My cock’s two feet”.

10.

While filming in Newcastle, Dale disappears into a chippy and is alarmed when he is suddenly accosted by hordes of Geordie men.

Fearing homophobic abuse, he is surprised when one asks him “You know those three lovely hostesses on Supermarket Sweep… Do you shag ’em?” “No, I replied, with a wink that projected every ounce of masculinity I could muster. ‘I’ve always made it a rule in life never to mix business with pleasure.”