Just Ignore Him: A BBC Two Between the Covers book club pick

Product Information

Alan Davies memoir is an example of the hidden misery which we all know exists but can’t bear to admit occurs as a matter of course. He still has what he describes as a general low-level bedrock of sadness, but what makes him actively sad now, when I ask him, is anything to do with his children: "If they're not happy or there's something that I can't affect or change or improve that makes me sad. I found myself alluding to the abuse without spelling it out, using the catch-all euphemism "difficult childhood". Later his Australian publishers confirmed “they would, of course, not stop us from covering any information that is available in the book. Davies's first book, the autobiographical My Favourite People and Me, 1978–88 was published by Michael Joseph ( Penguin Books) in September 2009.

In 2007, Davies starred in the second episode of ITV's You Don't Know You're Born and on The Unbelievable Truth. In 2001, Davies played Robert Gossage in Bob and Rose, a comedy drama about a gay man falling for a woman. Alan Davies, the English stand-up comedian, actor, quiz show panellist and author, has written a new book, Just Ignore Him – a memoir of his childhood in which some horrible things happen that reverberate through his whole life. just ignore him is written so beautifully, so honestly, that it's sometimes hard to reconcile this story with the cheery character i've grown up watching on tv for years.I found it very, very difficult and it wasn't cathartic, but I took as much care as I have over anything really. The title for this show came from a story he heard about a six-year-old girl being told off by her mother and responding "Life is pain". His monstrous, abusive, angry, unempathetic father is at the core of some shocking childhood memories. He is so evidently super-bright that I had assumed – before reading the book – that he was a smart grammar school boy (in fact he went to the same private school as his father and grandfather) who had gone to Oxford or Cambridge; his natural destination, as an acknowledged "brainbox" before he went off the rails as a teenager, becoming a compulsive thief and vandal. Marrying at the age of 40 (he says he wasn't ready before) and having a family of his own has been transformative.

The book details the sexual abuse that he suffered as a boy from his father between the ages of 8 and 13. Today, thanks to these brave people, the world is learning more about childhood abuse (and indeed other forms of domestic abuse). I’ve always been unable to maintain boundaries around myself in the face of his various behaviours but to leave her alone with him, even for a minute, was a disastrous mistake. The untenable nature of not being able to discuss the guts and marrow of the book – the abuse is alluded to on most pages or the death of his mother (which Davies also ring-fences as off limits) and is literally what the memoir is about. I don't eat meat – I do eat seafood sometimes, but usually because there isn't a good vegetarian option.His record stood until Joel Corry achieved 41 successful cracks at Capital's Jingle Bell Ball on 12 December 2021. A: [louder and more insistent] … the absolute agreement that nothing that was discussed in the room was discussed outside the room – not online or anywhere. The letter refers to the death of his mother, his memories of her, as well as him emerging with a "survivor's" resilience. But then the telling becomes sloppy, too many digressions, unnecessary repetitions, as if the author felt he didn't have enough material and had to fill the pages. At last I understand the cheeky lad on QI and if I ever see you in a comedic display on the floor I will salute your mother!

Mainly we talked about subjects around the abuse, the fallout from it; the lifelong depth charges from those formative years of never feeling safe. For me this story is another part of the healing process, that it shows that abused children do become wonderful adults, spouses and parents.He knows that once this happens, his precious cargo can be picked over and his childhood and life now become public property. I’m not immune from the tendency to translate my discomfort into avoidance and distaste for the victim rather than anger at the perpetrator.