{"id":7277,"date":"2025-07-19T04:03:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T04:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/7277\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T04:03:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T04:03:10","slug":"i-couldnt-cope-with-life-as-ronnie-corbetts-daughter-i-spent-15-months-in-psychiatric-units-but-now-im-a-therapist-myself-and-starting-a-new-career-as-a-stand-up-comedian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/7277\/","title":{"rendered":"I couldn’t cope with life as Ronnie Corbett’s daughter. I spent 15 months in psychiatric units. But now I’m a therapist myself… and starting a new career as a stand-up comedian!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perched on his famous armchair at the front of the London<\/a> Palladium stage, Ronnie Corbett<\/a> spied movement in the stalls just as he was about to launch into his story.<\/p>\n

It was his 11-year-old daughter Emma rising from her seat and leading her younger sister Sophie into the aisle and out of the auditorium.<\/p>\n

This was their father\u2019s solo slot in The Two Ronnies\u2019 stage show \u2013 his inimitable meandering monologue which was, by now, a national institution on TV.<\/p>\n

And here was his daughter pointedly snubbing it and making her sister an accomplice. What made her do it?<\/p>\n

\u2018It was boring,\u2019 she says. \u2018That\u2019s just what he did. I didn\u2019t know that was hugely talented.\u2019<\/p>\n

Emma Corbett, 58, is sitting in the magnificent garden of the five-bedroom home next to Muirfield Golf Course in Gullane which her father bought in 1980.<\/p>\n

She used to come here during school holidays. For the last few years, it has been her home \u2013 a seemingly idyllic East Lothian bolthole with gorgeous views across the Firth of Forth.<\/p>\n

From a distance, Corbett family life surely seemed idyllic too. First class travel; posh hotels; celebrity parties \u2026<\/p>\n

\"Emma <\/p>\n

\u00a0Emma Corbett in the garden of the family home in Gullane, East Lothian<\/p>\n

\"Corbett <\/p>\n

Corbett and Barker were close on screen, but not socially<\/p>\n

Up close, it was filled with turmoil for the elder daughter who craved a normality that was wholly incompatible with her father\u2019s showbusiness career. She began to loathe the attention he attracted: \u2018We\u2019d go out to the theatre and the queue for the ice cream would be shorter than the queue for my Dad.<\/p>\n

\u2018When my Dad walked down the street it was like Aladdin. It was like he was almost magical \u2013 and for me that was just beyond tiresome.<\/p>\n

\u2018I had no time, I felt, to be with my Dad. And people [approaching him] would say things like \u201cI know I shouldn\u2019t\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Up until about 13, I\u2019d let them do that and then, at 14, I\u2019d go \u201cSo why are you?\u201d. And then I\u2019d get the look. My Dad was never rude to anyone ever.\u2019<\/p>\n

In her rebellion she became increasingly rude \u2013 and unhinged. She was a headstrong teen, careering off the rails, getting thrown out of private school and, as she approached adulthood, showing ominous signs of mental health problems.<\/p>\n

In her 20s she would be incarcerated in psychiatric units three times. She suffered appalling depression and became a regular no-show at family gatherings.<\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t think I could cope with life,\u2019 she says. \u2018And I think I learned to go to dark places. And the more I couldn\u2019t cope with life the more I went to the dark place \u2013 and then I became really good at it. And then I spent more time in the dark place than I did in the light.\u2019<\/p>\n

A sense of dread, then, attended many of Ronnie Corbett\u2019s years in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

\"Emma, <\/p>\n

Emma, left, and aged 33 with her father and younger sister Sophie, is following in Ronnie\u2019s footsteps<\/p>\n

The Edinburgh-born star and his wife Anne \u2013 herself a former musical comedy performer \u2013 fretted endlessly over what would become of the daughter who seemed to exist under a cloud.<\/p>\n

Well, her career path is finally set. She has become a stand-up comedian.<\/p>\n

\u2018My parents had to be dead for me to start this stuff,\u2019 she says. But why? Wouldn\u2019t they have been thrilled to see her continuing the family tradition?<\/p>\n

\u2018I doubt any of the Beckham children are going to try and play football,\u2019 she says in response.<\/p>\n

\u2018We are not talking a mediocre comedian here. We are talking, you know, \u201cicon\u201d was the word used when he died. That is one of the painful things about Dad \u2013 he\u2019s such a f****** high bar setter, everything about him, and that makes it tricky. So now I\u2019m not letting anyone down.\u2019<\/p>\n

She may be several inches taller than his 5ft 1in, but there are echoes of his features in hers.<\/p>\n

There is a familiarity in the timbre of her voice, even if her refined<\/p>\n

London vowels are distinct from her father\u2019s Edinburgh ones. Yet almost no one at the live shows she has done so far has twigged that she is the daughter of comedy royalty.<\/p>\n

True, her frequent swearing may have thrown people off the scent. She knows well that would have been her father\u2019s central criticism of her routines.<\/p>\n

Her first performances were five-minute affairs at Edinburgh venue Monkey Barrel which, at the time, had a mural featuring her father at the back of the stage.<\/p>\n

\u2018So I had to stand with him painted next to me \u2013 nobody knowing. It\u2019s weird. I think maybe two people have gone \u201cInteresting surname, you\u2019re not by any chance \u2026\u201d I think people think \u201cThere\u2019s no way she\u2019s related; I won\u2019t ask; that will be embarrassing. Of course she\u2019s not Ronnie Corbett\u2019s daughter.\u2019<\/p>\n

Emma Corbett was born in April 1967, a year after her brother Andrew, who had a hole in his heart and survived only weeks.<\/p>\n

\u2018Mum and Dad weren\u2019t married when he was born. They got married in the weeks that Andrew was alive, and they had him baptised, and then they lost him.<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s a lot for a family. And also, now that I know what I know about mental health and us as humans, I was born to grieving parents. No wonder I was anxious.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Is she still alive? Is she still alive?\u2019 she repeats frantically, mimicking a pair of panic-stricken parents.<\/p>\n

A year later, her sister Sophie was born, and while the younger sibling embraced the \u2018glitter\u2019 that went with family life, the older one bitterly resented the disruptions.<\/p>\n

She remembers the summer seasons in seaside resorts where her father would perform for nine weeks on the trot.<\/p>\n

\u2018So we\u2019d all go \u2013 guinea pigs, dogs \u2013 we\u2019d all go, rent a house, very nice, but we\u2019d finish the summer term at a new school. That\u2019s sh*t. How do you integrate?<\/p>\n

\u2018My sister learned to be sweet \u2013 is sweet \u2013 like a butterfly, and I\u2019m ballsy and funny and that\u2019s how I got away with it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Far more disruptive times lay ahead. In 1979, Australia\u2019s Channel 9 commissioned its own series of The Two Ronnies and Corbett and Barker moved there, families in tow, for more than a year.<\/p>\n

It was a remarkable sojourn \u2013 a chance for their families to observe at close quarters one of the most fascinating partnerships in showbusiness: warm, even devoted, yet strangely distant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018When it was work, it was love. And I suppose it was so intense that it was quite nice to get a break from each other to refresh.<\/p>\n

\u2018The closest we were is when we all went to Australia. So, enormous warmth, very different characters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘For example, Dad wouldn\u2019t say: \u201cOh, it\u2019s a beautiful Sunday. Let\u2019s get the Barkers over for a barbecue\u201d. It wasn\u2019t that sort of relationship.<\/p>\n

\u2018My Dad was boundaried and that was \u201cwork\u201d so he would see that as unnecessary.\u2019<\/p>\n

Arriving back at Old Palace School, in Croydon, young Emma was horrified to find she was being dropped down a year because \u2013 thanks to Australia \u2013 she was now behind in many subjects.<\/p>\n

\u2018That\u2019s when I went \u201cI\u2019m getting off the bus\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n

Within months, she was kicked out of school. \u2018In the nicest way,\u2019 she adds. \u2018Because everything happens nicely when you are Ronnie Corbett\u2019s daughter.\u2019<\/p>\n

She was sent to a tutorial college in South Kensington \u2013 with large gaps in the timetable to get up to mischief in the capital.<\/p>\n

\u2018Suddenly I was getting a train up to the centre of London and meeting a whole bunch of delinquents. We were all bright kids who had lost our way and our parents had a few quid.\u2019<\/p>\n

By 21, she was a mother \u2013 the relationship with the father didn\u2019t last \u2013 and, within a few years was so troubled she went into a psychiatric facility while her parents took care of her son, Tom.<\/p>\n

\u2018I joke that I\u2019ve been sectioned \u2013 of course, I haven\u2019t because I\u2019m posh, but I\u2019ve had three incarcerations.\u2019<\/p>\n

Were they against her will?<\/p>\n

\u2018The first time, definitely. The next two times I had a better understanding of why it was happening. So, I think, 15-and-a-half months of my life I\u2019ve spent in a psychiatric unit.\u2019<\/p>\n

The roots of her recovery lie in a showbiz function where her father was chatting to Monty Python star Michael Palin. Corbett told him just how worried he was about his older daughter and Palin gave him a name \u2013 psychiatrist Gerald Libby.<\/p>\n

\u2018I saw so many West End Harley Street boys and I would say anything that fell out of my mouth \u2013 they didn\u2019t get me.<\/p>\n

\u2018It felt like they were trying to put right something that couldn\u2019t be right \u2013 and then I met Gerald Libby who, without a shadow of a doubt, saved my life.\u2019<\/p>\n

At 30, she gave birth to her second child \u2013 daughter Tilly \u2013 but remained fragile. A few months of her pregnancy were spent in The Priory. Although she married the father, the union was short-lived.<\/p>\n

But, in adulthood, she knew that her parents were firmly in her corner. \u2018They were brilliant,\u2019 she says. \u2018They threw everything at it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Dad, who had always been unbelievably busy \u2013 very kind, generous, but not ridiculously generous \u2013 when I got properly ill, he was amazing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Now a single mother of two, she took a job as a librarian at Bede\u2019s School in Sussex because the post gave her 75 per cent off the fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She later became a house matron, where her natural empathy with teenagers and their problems soon suggested a way forward.<\/p>\n

She trained as a therapist,\u00a0eventually establishing her own private practice.<\/p>\n

\u2018My favourites are school refusers \u2013 my favourites are me, really. I am not a therapist who will sit in the sh*t with people for very long any more. So I will hear and watch and then I will call them out and challenge it.\u2019<\/p>\n

By the time her father died, aged 85, in 2016, he knew that his daughter had turned her life around and was now helping to turn others around.<\/p>\n

In the garden of his former Scottish home, she mentions the gap in the wall which Muirfield Golf Club cut for her father to walk straight on to the course. In his later years, they would leave a golf buggy there for him.<\/p>\n

Photos of the star in a flat cap still adorn the downstairs toilet. It was here in Gullane that the older Corbett daughter became a carer for her ailing mother during lockdown. Life, it seemed, had come full circle.<\/p>\n

\u2018It was slow and difficult at times \u2013 it was a miracle I didn\u2019t kill her myself,\u2019 she says laughing.<\/p>\n

\u2018And then suddenly it was over, and I didn\u2019t know what to do with myself.\u2019<\/p>\n

Anne Corbett died aged 90 in 2023 and her daughter stayed on in a house filled with family memories. She discovered that her parents had kept all her cards and letters of apology for her errant behaviour down the years.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s quite hysterical \u2013 \u201cthere are no words for my behaviour\u201d. I was always very good at apologising.\u2019<\/p>\n

For now, the house is in a state of disarray. She is moving into a one-bedroom wooden chalet she has had built in the garden and the Corbett home is to become a short-term holiday let.<\/p>\n

In her live shows, she majors on many of her own misadventures. Her last husband left her for a religious cult, she tells audiences (he really did) \u2013 he found God while she found cake.<\/p>\n

She rails at the fearful, woke tendencies of modern comedy \u2013 while admitting she won\u2019t go anywhere near gender ID \u2013 and, when asked if stand-up has become too Left-wing, answers emphatically: \u2018Yes! Yes!\u2019<\/p>\n

So far, her father has been largely absent from her routines, but that is about to change. \u2018Next year I\u2019m hoping it will be a lot more about the extraordinary story of being brought up famous.\u2019<\/p>\n

She adds: \u2018It\u2019s a tricky bridge to privilege because my life has been tough but it ain\u2019t that tough and I don\u2019t want them not to like me, so it\u2019s going to have to be crafted very well.\u2019<\/p>\n

What would her father think of her new direction in life?<\/p>\n

\u2018I think he really would have approved of me being brave enough. He always thought I had undersold myself. However, he would not like my language.\u2019<\/p>\n

After every gig, she comes home and \u2018unpicks\u2019 her show in her head with the comedy master whose own routine she boycotted as a child all those years ago.<\/p>\n

What does he say to her?<\/p>\n

\u2018He says \u201cTrust your instinct, my dear one. You\u2019ve waited a long time. Never take it for granted and never stop working hard\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n

Emma Corbett is appearing at Corbett\u2019s Comedy Cabaret at Fringe by the Sea in North Berwick on August 6. She also features in Five Mugs, No Tea, from August 11 to 24, at Edinburgh\u2019s Leith Depot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perched on his famous armchair at the front of the London Palladium stage, Ronnie Corbett spied movement in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[428,97,2169,96,59,50,4038,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-7277","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-edinburgh","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-gb","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-ronnie-corbett","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}