Pam, this is your brother!

When EastEnders star Pam St Clement appeared on This Is Your Life there were no relatives to share her joy.

The TV show, which should have been a family celebration, revealed a sad side to the actress's life that fans of the soap knew nothing about.

Pam, battle-axe Pat Evans in the nation's favourite show, was brought up as an only child and spent a lonely childhood farmed out to foster parents.

Yet today we can reveal what the TV researchers failed to discover - that 55-year-old Pam has a brother she knew nothing about.

Amazingly, he is a real-life EastEnder - and lives just 20 miles from his famous sister.

Last night, when Reg Clements was told he had a sister he knew nothing about, he was overjoyed.

"This is wonderful news," the caretaker from Waltham Forest, East London, beamed. "I would love to meet her."

And at her luxury house in Radlett, Herts, Pam admitted that the discovery of a long-lost brother was a shock.

After studying our evidence that she and Reg shared the same father it finally dawned on her that she had a half-brother.

"Wouldn't it come as a shock to you?" she asked.

Pam said she had been in touch with her late father all her life - but he had never said that he had other children.

"But I had wondered whether this would ever happen," she said. "Maybe I'd like to meet him - out of curiosity.

"There's been a lot of insinuations and assumptions and rumours about me all my life. Maybe now's the time to write my autobiography."

The previously untold story of her life is a tale of sad childhoods, multi-marriages and abandoned children.

Pam and Reg's father - also called Reginald - married FIVE times.

Reg is the only son of his first marriage, while Pam is the only daughter of his second.

The astonishing story began in 1931 when Reginald Clements married Ellen Bray. Two years later their son Reg was born.

But despite the fact that Reginald had himself been bought up in an orphanage he abandoned his toddler son. Last night, Reg, 64, said: "I had no idea I had a sister because I never knew what became of my father. I've no recollection of my childhood at all."

Reg and Pam's reluctant father rose to become the managing director of a toy manufacturers in London.

Reg says: "Mum never seemed to want to talk about him, and I didn't push it. I think he'd been playing about with other women."

Just days before Reg's seventh birthday his father married for the second time, to Ann Tribe - Pam's mother.

At the time of their marriage they were living in St Clement Street, Islington, which later provided the inspiration for Pam's stage name.

On May 11, 1942 Pamela Ann Clements was born, but the family happiness was destined to be short-lived.

Shortly after Pam was born her mother died, and by the time Pam was four her father had remarried again.

Pam has only briefly spoken of her childhood.

"I was always being farmed off to holiday homes," she said. "Then, when I was just pre-teens, I went down to Devon to some people who were very good at taking on youngsters, and what began as a business arrangement became my home." Pam was brought up on a farm and later boarded at a private school on the South Downs.

She said she knew her father had married several times.

"There IS a possibility that I had a step-brother somewhere I don't know about," she said then.

Reg, who successfully fought cancer in 1988, is now hoping to meet Pam.

He said: "I would like to get in touch with her. I watch EastEnders and I know her character. I knew her name was Clements, but I never thought we were related.

"I'd like to meet her, not because she's a celebrity, but because she's a blood relation.

"I feel very sorry that I can't remember my childhood, or my father. I don't know if Pam has memories of him."

Reg, who works as a caretaker at an adult education centre near his home, has been married to wife Eleanor for 43 years.

They have one son, David, 40, and three grandchildren of 17, 14, and eight. His wife Eleanor said: "David will be very excited to learn he has an auntie, and, of course, Pam has a nephew.

"I would love Reg to meet her. It will be lovely for him to have a sister.

"We're more Coronation Street fans really, but we do watch EastEnders now and then."

Eleanor added: "Reg doesn't remember his dad because he was only small when he left.

"All he can remember is that he bought him a cowboy hat - and we've still got a photo of him wearing it.

"Reg's mother never said much about him, except that he was no good.

"He must have been a bounder. But whatever happened between his mum and him, Reg was still his son.

"How could he leave a lad who's three or four, his only child, and never want to see him again?"

Reginald Clements died in May 1993, aged 84. Ironically he was living in London, just a few miles from both Pam and Reg.

Pam, who has been in EastEnders for 11 years, is an intensely private person who seldom speaks about her personal life.

In 1990 she admitted she was a lesbian and had had a 16-year relationship with lover Jackie Reed, but they parted three years ago.

Since then Pam has been on her own.

"It makes no difference to us if she is a lesbian," says Eleanor. "She's Reg's sister and that's the important thing."

IN A fascinating case of TV imitating real-life, a new EastEnders plotline involves the hunt for a secret half-sister. But in the soap it is EastEnder Pauline Fowler who discovers her mum had a fling 60 years ago.

Copyright 1997 MGN LTD
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