Ashley Walters – so solid dad

“I have grown up being a father. When my first son was born I was 17. I was a child bringing up a child. I was not capable of understanding what a dad was meant to be.”

Ashley Walters, actor and former rapper with So Solid Crew, is keen to talk about fatherhood, not only because he is in the market for some new wheels – a pram, to be precise – but also because modern fatherhood will be a key subject when he appears, later this month, at the Being a Man festival at the Southbank Centre in London.

He and his wife, Danielle Isaie, a fellow actor he married in 2013, have a three-day-old son, River, whose entrance into the world made Walters a father for the eighth time at the age of 34 – 16 years after the birth of his first son, Shayon.

Earlier this year, Walters presented Top Dad, a Channel 4 series that saw him meet fathers in unusual situations (among them a reformed gangster, a teenage adoptive father and one undergoing gender reassignment).

Fatherhood, he wants to show, doesn’t have to fit the nuclear, 2.4 children model. “Now I know there is no rulebook. You take it as it comes, learn from mistakes and try to redress them as best as you can,” he says. “When we think someone is a great dad, what it really means is that we like the way they try.”At pains to point out that he’s no parenting guru – “it’s always a work in progress, once one thing goes right, another drops off” – and that he is not yet the father he would like to be, he does, undeniably, have a lot of experience.

“I call myself an every dad. I have so many different things going on,” he says. He had three children with his first partner. Two more, with another partner, live in Leeds, and distance and a strained relationship with their mother makes physical contact less frequent than he would like. He is stepfather to his wife’s son and now he has two children in his marriage (“a traditional set-up”). “It can be crazy, juggling it all, both of us working, too. I’ve called two of my children this week, but I need to call the others. I find it a challenge sometimes to have all that responsibility.”

What matters, though, he repeats, is the trying. “Without that, it all goes wrong. That is when you become an absent dad.” Walters knows about this. Brought up by his mother – “she was my mum and dad” – his father was rarely present, notorious on the streets and often in prison. “He would sometimes take me out and we would be chased by the police. He’d tell me to put my head down. As an 11-year-old I would support him home drunk.” Looking back, he sees they were tough times.

Back then though, as “a young, shy boy in Peckham”, he idolised his father, craving his attention. “I went through being mugged and bullied. I heard stories about my dad. I wondered why he never protected me. I loved the man and I have still not got over the fact he wasn’t there for me.”

Positive male role models, he says, are very important. “Their absence is a huge factor in why so many young boys – in particular black boys – are committing crimes against each other. It is an issue we need to address.”

“There’s a different mentality. I wouldn’t hear my son talking like that because he knows he doesn’t have to, that he can cry, that it doesn’t make him less of a man if he is vulnerable or honest about how he feels.”

When Walters became a parent himself, his father provided a role model in reverse. “I knew exactly what I wasn’t going to be,” he says. “I never wanted my kids to have the experience of not knowing me or where they came from. I never want them to wonder, ‘Did he love me?’ I want to be there at the pivotal moments, for them to know how proud I am of who they are becoming.”

Walters’ father died from cancer, aged 45, soon after being reconciled with his son. Over the preceding weeks, Walters had filmed their daily conversations. “It was therapeutic. We spoke about why he hadn’t been there. He told me about his upbringing, stuff I didn’t know. His parents didn’t want him. He was in care, in borstal. He couldn’t read or write when he died. It was no wonder he was how he was.”

In the end, says Walters, his father probably did the best thing by staying away. “I think he was scared because he didn’t want me to be like him. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t need those influences. I just wished he could have been more honest.”

Unsurprisingly, Walters considers truth crucial to meaningful parenting. “My kids know I require honesty. I don’t want to be that dad shut away in another room. Tell me what you have done – wrong or right – that is the only way I can help,” he says.

Walters’ children know his story. In 2002, he was sentenced to 18 months in a young offenders’ institute for possession of a firearm. “When they were growing up they weren’t allowed toy weapons in the house and they would ask why. I would tell them: ‘I went to prison for gun crime.’ It is a huge thing.”

“Sometimes my 13-year-old son, who has autism and ADHD, will come out with it at the dinner table when we’ve got someone there. ‘So, Dad, how was prison?’ Now you want to talk about it! But I embrace it. They should know I didn’t get here without making mistakes, that I didn’t need to do any of that stuff, that I was seduced by the supposed glamour and that I am a better person without it. A journey can be rough, but you can change.”

His oldest children have lived through much of that change with him. “I am a completely different dad now. Back then, I didn’t want to shape them too much. It was always a discussion.”

For teenage fathers, he says, setting boundaries is difficult. “I still want them to have the freedom to think, but I am more disciplined now. Initially, fatherhood was too overwhelming.” His partner was ill with postnatal depression and Walters suddenly found himself “doing everything” – cooking, cleaning, caring for the baby and taking him along to his music studios each day.

“It was so rewarding – feeling needed is a wonderful thing for men, too – but perhaps that amazing closeness is why our relationship can be volatile now.” His eldest son, he admits, isn’t speaking to him. “He wants to rebel – girls, music – I try not to judge. I remember what it was like to be that age and I know there is only so much I can do. I can install the software and give the examples, but then they have to go out and make their decisions.”

He worries that today’s teenagers are under heavy pressure. “The bombardment of images – all glamour, material and lifestyle-led – doesn’t show the effort and the time to get there, and whether it actually means anything. I was taught to work for something. If it’s too easy, you quickly lose it.”

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His own mother – an “inspirational”, formidable woman who expected her son to achieve, and who, though not demonstrative, clearly adored him – instilled a fierce work ethic.

“I am more emotionally connected to my kids. I tell them I love them, hug them more,” he says, “but the values – that drive and determination always to do your best – come from my mum. I want my children to be happy, of course, but mostly I want them to give 100%.”

So far, he says, they couldn’t care less about his career. “I am just Dad, doing everyday stuff, going to the park, eating pizza, being in the moment. They treat me like a deadbeat dad, to be honest. It is a brilliant and grounding thing.”

His parenting highlight is a seemingly simple one: “Having all of my children, my wife and me in the same room.” Pre-River, logistics have allowed this twice in the past five years. “I sort of floated into the air and watched them. They are a team, so much more powerful together than alone. Seeing their relationship is amazing,” he says. “I also truly realised that I have got a lot of bloody kids!”