Actor Bruce Byron, who plays tough guy DC Terry Perkins in The Bill, tells Hannah Stephenson how he sought therapy for his self-hatred and poor body image before learning to tackle his weight problem.

HE’S spent his acting career playing tough guys, but Bruce Byron – aka DC Terry Perkins of The Bill – has frequently been in the depths of despair about his weight. At one point, his self-image was so low and he felt so fat that he sought therapy.

“Therapy for negative body image didn’t really work for me because it’s all well and good when someone says ‘You have to love the person you are’, but I didn’t want to be that person so I couldn’t love something I didn’t want to be,” he says.

“Having been a fat child, I was destined always to be miserable and dissatisfied with my body.”

Today 49-year-old Bruce is in more buoyant mood, having lost two-and-a-half stones.

He looks fit and trim as we meet over a skinny latte to discuss how he has managed to shed those pounds – a battle he details in his new book, Fat Bloke Slims.

Now weighing around 13- and-a-half stones, he has lost the weight through sensible eating, smaller portions and an intense exercise regime. His ideal weight is 13 stones so he still has a little to lose.

Although he doesn’t count calories, he is fervently aware of what he eats – carbs when he is training, no carbs if he has missed a gym session. He has given up alcohol completely – at least for the time being – and bought smaller plates for his reduced portions.

He exercises two or three times a week by getting to the gym near The Bill set at 6.30am before filming begins.

No particular food is off-limits, he explains.

“I can have anything I want. I’ve taken the approach of Alcoholics Anonymous – one day at a time. If I fancy a ham and cheese panini, I’ll have it. I’ll just make sure I work a little harder in the gym.

Bruce, who is married to TV psychologist, Professor Tanya Byron, with whom he has two children, Lily, 13 and ten-year-old Jack, says his wife had long been aware of his negative body image.

“She was very supportive, but there’s only so much a wife can do, whether they’re a doctor or professor of psychology. Tanya is my wife, not my psychologist. She can only support.”

The catalyst for change came after Tanya’s father died of a heart attack in 2005, when she was filming the TV programme The House Of Tiny Tearaways.

In the aftermath of his death, Bruce started smoking heavily again and drinking too much.

He also saw his weight creeping up. By May 2007 he had a 40ins waist and man boobs and, at 5ft 7in, weighed 15 stones 12lbs, which made him morbidly obese.

“I had struggled with weight all my life. Then I gave up smoking and compensated by eating.”

His wife tried gently to bring up the subject of his weight gain, but Bruce admits he was, and still is, touchy about the subject.

“I used to perspire when I ate and my clothes didn’t fit me. I was constantly out of breath. She gently persevered, but the last thing she wanted to row with me about was something that had been with me all my life.

“Eventually Tanya said ‘If you don’t stop putting weight on and start exercising there’s a good chance you will have a heart attack and I can’t bear the thought of losing you like I lost my dad’.”

It may have been a mother’s love which started him on the road to obesity.

His mum was one of 18 children in an Irish family who grew up when food was at a premium, while his father was a fit, muscular soldier.

When the family moved to London, she stuffed her only child with food to show him that she loved him.

Of course, he put on weight and was the subject of ridicule at school, although he soon became the tough nut who would avoid bullying through aggressive behaviour. When his mother discovered he was being teased, she sent him to Weight Watchers, an even more humiliating experience.

“I was surrounded by fat, middle-aged housewives.

I was not just the only child, I was also the only male. And now that I was on a special diet, I had to go into a classroom at lunchtime and eat on my own.”

By the time he was 14 his parents were divorced and he and his mother had moved back to the west coast of Ireland. He left school to become a baker to help his mother, who was struggling financially.

Later, he went into the music business, playing drums in bands. His lifestyle meant being up all night and sleeping all day, and he became stick thin.

In the late 1970s he met his first wife, an Australian, and together they moved to Australia, where he worked on oil and gas rigs. He remained there for ten years but all the time he was yearning to be an actor.

When he was in Adelaide, he heard about a new drama school, Artts International, in Yorkshire. He returned to Britain in 1989 to join. He also met Tanya, whose father ran the drama school, and was immediately smitten.

On leaving the school he clinched a number of roles, appearing in The Messenger, The Mummy Returns and From Hell, as well as appearing as Gary Bolton in Eastenders in 2001, before getting his big break almost six years ago as DC Terry Perkins in The Bill.

He doesn’t worry that he’ll be typecast, having spent so long in the police drama.

“I’m never going to be Mr Darcy. I’ll always be the tough guy in something – police, villain, the army, whatever. I’m never going to be one of these little lean guys. But when I look in the mirror now I feel great.

“Tanya said to me this morning ‘If I wasn’t married to you I’d have an affair with you’. You can’t get better than when your wife is saying that after nearly 20 years.”

■ Fat Bloke Slims by Bruce Byron (Penguin, 6.99).