Former Wham! backing singer Shirlie Kemp shares two children Roman and Harleymoon with EastEnders icon and I’m A Celeb star Martin Kemp, but the family had a brush with danger during a holiday
Martin and Roman have previously appeared on Celebrity Gogglebox together(Image: LightRocket via Getty Images)
Shirlie Kemp has shared how a request from her son Roman saved her family from being caught up in a catastrophic natural disaster. The former Wham! backing singer, 63, and Spandau Ballet bassist Martin were planning a family holiday back in 2004.
Shirlie, a mother of two, had envisioned a “very spiritual journey” for the family. However, The One Show presenter Roman, who was only nine years old at the time, had his heart set on a trip to The Bahamas to experience a slide that passes through a sea of sharks.
On Travel Secrets the Podcast, Shirlie disclosed that Roman’s insistence led the family to choose a Caribbean getaway over Thailand in 2004. This was the year when the Boxing Day tsunami wreaked havoc around the Indian Ocean, claiming the lives of around 200,000 people across 14 countries, including Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
During the podcast, Shirlie recounted: “We had a scary time that Roman wanted to go to the Bahamas, to the Atlantis Hotel, and we did not want to go there. And he’s going, ‘Please can we go, you can go through a slide and go through sharks’, and he was obsessed.
“I wanted to go to Thailand and have a very spiritual journey and have a holiday in that tone. So Roman got his way and that was the year that the tsunami happened in Thailand. I’ve never been so grateful to listen to your children. I went down the slide, it was horrendous, he’s like, ‘Come on mum, come again’.”
(Image: Jeff Spicer, Getty Images)
Martin and Shirlie’s holiday escapades weren’t without their fair share of danger. Martin recounted a hair-raising incident where Shirlie ended up rolling a Mini during a rally through a rice paddy on their three-week adventure in Vietnam, which resulted in him being hospitalised after getting trapped inside the overturned vehicle.
He reminisced: “We’re on this big rally within a rally and we’re on this big rally and you have to go through these rice paddies. Shirlie’s driving and I’m navigating. It’s kind of a time trial and you’ve got to put your foot down, because it’s a race. We start off and Shirlie puts her foot down.
“We’re in this old Mini with a roll bar and someone said to me before we left, ‘If you crash, never hold on to the roll bar, that’s the last thing you want to do because you can get trapped’. First thing we do, Shirlie puts her toe down, we go into the rice paddy, and the whole car turns onto its head, we’re upside down in the rice paddy.
Shirlie says Roman meant the family avoided being caught in a major natural disaster(Image: Channel 4 )
“Luckily there’s no water in the rice paddy, but what do I do? Grab onto the roll bar. So my hand has been caught between the roof and the roll bar. So Shirlie has unbuckled herself and got out. I’m stuck inside this car that has just been filled with petrol, glass has gone, and I’m hanging there trapped, upside down in the middle of nowhere.”
Martin was terrified he might “lose my fingers or something” when he saw his hand had “gone blue”. Shirlie, on the other hand, recalls being “screaming” until two workers from the rice field noticed their predicament.
They were able to rescue the former soap star and rush him to a hospital that resembled “like a little shack”.
Shirlie further explained that the car rolled because Martin’s knee accidentally “knocked” the navigation system, causing it not to alert her of an upcoming sharp bend. She continued: “As I’m going so fast there’s a right bend with a huge tree in front of us and I’m thinking if I don’t we’re going to have to roll this car because I’m going too fast. That tree will kill us.”
Fortunately for Martin, sensation returned to his hand “a few weeks later”. The Gold singer is currently appearing in I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!on ITV One.
He will be back on our screens alongside Angry Ginge, Kelly Brook, and rapper Aitch from 9pm tonight (November 20).
Meanwhile, Roman is competing in Celebrity Race Across the World with his sister Harleymoon Kemp. Tonight, viewers will see the siblings racing against Anita Rani as they speed along the coast to enter Honduras by sea. Celebrity Race Across the World airs on BBC Two at 8pm.
