At the end of Patti Boulaye’s autobiography, at the bottom of page 352, the sharp-sighted will spot some mysterious initials. After the final sentence – “For you, who have just read my story, I pray that all your prayers will be answered” – you will find the initials TTGOG.
“They stand for ‘Thank The Glory Of God’,” the singer and actress reveals, as she sips a fresh mint tea in the west London café where we’ve met to discuss her newly published book The Faith of a Child. “I deliberately put the message in code. I think it’s stronger when someone asks what the letters stand for.”
This message of gratitude to the Lord could sum up Patti’s attitude to her extraordinary life. Now 62, with a mane of thick dark hair, huge cat-like eyes and a star to the tips of her scarlet-lacquered fingernails, everything about her life has been exceptional.
She was born Patricia Ebigwei in rural eastern Nigeria in 1954. She was one of eight children (one died in infancy) who were brought up as strict Catholics: there was a bell for prayers every morning at five and she went to a Catholic girls’ school. Her mother worked as a machinist in a factory, her father ran a post office. When she was two, her parents split up and went through a bitter divorce, leaving the family penniless. Patti, dressed in rags, became separated from her mother.
The family’s fortunes were restored when Patti’s mother married a prominent politician in 1957, and she and Patti were reunited.
But there were more dramas to come. Between 1967 and 1970 Nigeria was in the throes of the Biafran war. Patti was caught behind enemy lines and witnessed unimaginable horrors. Her mother, whom she credits with being the greatest influence on her life, hid as many as 30 people at a time in their house as Patti witnessed one massacre after another. Later she lost two of her brothers, one a pilot who died in a horrific plane crash.
Yet despite the trauma of these early years and the vicissitudes her family has suffered, the woman I talk to today is serene, sunny and grateful for all that God has given her.
“I think I have only got really angry with God once, when my brother died,” she says. “I was so angry for mother to have lost a son. But I was only angry for a day.”
Writing the book has proved cathartic, she says. “I think I never really accepted I had lost my brothers until I wrote my story. I kept expecting to see them. Thanks to writing the book, I’ve laid them to rest.”
There’s no question that God has blessed Patti with a multitude of talents. She abandoned her first ambition to be a nun during a sightseeing trip to London when she was 16. She was standing in a queue for what she assumed was Madame Tussauds. It turned out to be the line to audition for the original London production of Hair. Patti won a part.
She went on to star in numerous musicals, plays and West End productions, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Carmen Jones and The Black Mikado, as well as writing and producing Sun Dance, a celebration of African colour, music and dance. Television and film roles followed, as well as her own series on Channel 4. Yet the glamorous star of stage and screen, with eyelashes that remind me of a giraffe’s, is only one version of Patti Boulaye. She is also wife to the businessman Stephen Komlosy, and mother to Sebastian, 32, a graphic designer, and Aret, 40, a director of communications for a City club.
Oh, and she’s also a stepmother to Stephen’s four children by his previous wife, grandmother to eight, and a philanthropist who has started five clinics in Africa, and a school with Prince Harry’s charity, Setenbale, in Lesotho.
Probably the most challenging episode in her personal and religious life was feeling unworthy that she had fallen for a divorcee. She stopped taking Communion, and only after a papal blessing and Stephen’s conversion to Catholicism did she restart.
Her aim in writing her powerful and moving story is to share with her children the truth that she is not just, as she puts it, “this glam woman in showbusiness”. “Showbusiness is just what I do,” she says. The book is about something much more important – it’s about her values and beliefs, and what she has learnt on her incredible journey. She says she wanted her children to understand what it means to grow up in a genocide. “Everything else pales in comparison. Their lives growing up here in England have been so different from mine.”
The experience made her “an ogre in the house”, she says, far stricter with her children than those growing up near the family house in Putney. She was keen to inculcate in them, above all, a sense of respect and consideration for others. (The family now live in a village in Buckinghamshire.)
She also wrote the book because she had a strong sense of her own mortality. “Life is short,” she says. “I was brought up on a slogan that careless talk costs lives. I wanted to share the truth of my upbringing with my children. Before the book, I think they probably only knew five per cent of the reality of my life.
“I don’t believe life is supposed to be easy,” she continues. “Life is tough, so we’ve got to be tougher, and we are because of Jesus. But I’ve always learnt more from my mistakes.” She shares a lovely image: life is like gold – it must be burnt, beaten and shaped to be turned into a beautiful piece of jewellery.
At every dramatic step, Patti has felt the guiding hand of God. Of all those I have been lucky enough to interview for these pages, I would say Patti’s faith is the most evident: in her numerous references throughout our hour-long chat to God and the Bible, in her description of her active faith, and in her child-like wonder and certainty of her belief. She prays twice a day before a home altar, once in the evening with her husband of 40 years, and always fasts on Fridays.
“That’s why I called the book The Faith of a Child,” she says, a phrase which came from her mother’s description of her belief. She acknowledges that her faith is intense, likening it to a child sitting by a pool who just dives in, no questions asked. “People are so articulate, but God doesn’t need many words,” she says, when I ask if she ever finds it difficult to pray.
For anyone who doubts, she suggests looking at a newborn baby. “We’re all miracles. Whenever one of my children finds someone challenging, I say to see the Jesus in them.”
God will provide whatever answer we need, she says – more so than any psychiatrist. “He’s just another man,” she laughs, when we turn to a subject of great mutual interest, mental health.
The show must go on. This week Patti Boulaye is back on stage in her own show, Billie and Me, about the singer Billie Holiday, at the Pheasantry in King’s Road, Chelsea.
“She was also a Catholic,” Patti reflects as we near the end of our chat. “But she died of drugs. I’ve never even smoked a cigarette” – perhaps one reason why she looks remarkably young and still luminously beautiful.
“You can do showbiz a different way,” she says. “You can work hand in hand with God. He is always in control. How could I do anything I do without Him?”
Patti Boulaye’s autobiography, The Faith of a Child, is published by Bipada Academy. It is available for £12.99 on Lulu and Amazon UK, and £3.51 on Kindle
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