As a parent himself now he knows that wonderful feeling of putting your hand out for your child to grasp without needing to look back.

More recently, there was an altercation with a climbing instructor who bumped into Davies’ children in a leisure centre and then took the story to a newspaper.

This series started off as one off television film in 1998, which later resulted in a series two years later. A: It’s tricky, Ginny, because I don’t want to talk about that in the interview or outside the book. As an actor, it's possibly surprising that he hasn't developed a script to deal with how to talk about this trauma. There was no real sense of a timeline for a lot of the book so I wasn't entirely sure where everything fitted in the grand scheme of things. 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.

Davies's first book, the autobiographical My Favourite People and Me, 1978–88 was published by Michael Joseph ( Penguin Books) in September 2009.It’s bereavement and ‘special cuddles’ and casual verbal and psychological abuse interspersed with teatimes and holidays and football jerseys and nicking comics at the newsagent and Terry Wogan on Radio 2. This book teaches us that kindness and humour are not only attractive qualities of one’s character but they are also essential for one’s survival. After the death of his mother when he is only six years old, he is raised alongside his brother and sister by his father. I feel this should be read by everyone to be made aware of the effects abuse can have on people and how it is scarily normal to not realise what you have experienced is abuse.

The manic mop of curls – familiar from all those years in Jonathan Creek, as well as appearances in other "soft murder" dramas, the quiz show QI and a variety of panel shows – is mostly grey now but he looks younger than his decade, in a blue and white striped T-shirt. Later his Australian publishers confirmed “they would, of course, not stop us from covering any information that is available in the book.

He argued the case for John Lennon as the greatest Briton of all time on the BBC's Great Britons series in 2002. i haven't seen anyone mention this in reviews, so if you are sensitive to stories of child abuse, sexual assault, death of a parent, and/or trauma, please bear in mind these topics are discussed in heavy detail throughout the book.

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! Well, this may have been Davies' intention, but you cannot read Just Ignore Him (what his father urged Alan's siblings to do when he ‘acted up') without feeling anger yourself. But the presumption of privacy we give to the family neglects the fact that it is the de facto locus of almost all evil in the world.Even at this remove, and having written the book about it, there was something so raw and naked about his response. First in the Empire, then in the Church and its successor governments, what went on in the family stayed in the family. Ever since (but not before) the establishment of Roman Law, the institution of the family has been considered an exception. In September 2010, he began a three-part documentary series Alan Davies' Teenage Revolution ( Channel 4), partly based on his autobiographical book My Favourite People and Me, 1978–88. I haven't smacked mine [as he was a lot as a child] but I've grabbed hold of them and I've shouted at them and I've struggled to control my temper with them and it is really, really difficult, parenting.