JUST IGNORE HIM by Alan Davies

 

If you do a bit of googling on tragedy/pain and comedians you will find lots of quotes about the relationship between the two. It is certainly most apt for this memoir from well known comedian and actor Alan Davies - out of the distress of his early years, a successful and it would seem well-adjusted man has emerged.  Such a sad story: a little boy bereft at the death of his mother from leukaemia, left in the care of his father who it transpires is a sexual deviant. What a legacy of pain, confusion, anger, loneliness Alan  has had to deal with. The book opens with Alan driving around the country side with a parcel of pornography portraying young boys that his stepmother has given him to hopefully get rid of. The power this man has had over Alan, his siblings, his stepmother, other family, friends and neighbours is extraordinary, his ability to manipulate any situation to suit himself frightening. And yet he is Alan's father - half of him comes from his father - the bond, blood or otherwise is never really completely broken. 

Alan Davies has written of a childhood that really was not happy, although he didn't really have anything to compare it with. His father started abusing him not long after his mother died, and continued till he was about 13 when he was finally was able to stand up for himself. Meantime he still had go to school, find friends, learn, pass exams, navigate the school yard social zoo. A bright, friendly popular boy who could so easily have turned into a delinquent, but didn't, learning the hard way that you can't buy friendship. Fortunately for Alan, he discovers drama and performing where he can channel his childhood trauma. Plus he left home. 

It seems this book has been written as he has come out the other side - full of reflection, of his early life and of himself, moving between his childhood and now as he navigates what to do with this bundle of pornography. There is a slight sense of him writing about a child that once was, almost as if he is looking down on his younger self, now in full understanding as to why he is the man he is now. It has humour, wonderful moments of memory of his short time with his mother, and yet the thread of betrayal and loss of his family runs throughout the entire story. Beautiful, sad, uplifting, and hopeful.