Alan Davies: ‘My father was sexually attracted to boys – I was the nearest’

Alan Davies: ‘My father was sexually attracted to boys – I was the nearest’



Posted by theipaper

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  1. Five years ago, Alan Davies revealed that he had been sexually abused by his father between the ages of eight and 13. He divulged the details in a bravely harrowing, blackly comic memoir, *Just Ignore Him*: how after his mother had died of leukemia when Davies was six, Roy Davies would join him for “special cuddles” in bed; how his father gaslit and manipulated Davies and his family into silence, even support; how his stepmother had discovered his father’s extensive collection of pornography involving the abuse of children late in life, which she duly handed over to Davies.

    “That really was a big turning point in my life,” Davies says. “I just imagined it was something between him and me. Then I realised he’s obsessed – obsessed – with boys. He was only sexually attracted to boys, and I was the nearest boy.” Eventually Davies reported his dad to the police: he was arrested, but his developing Alzheimer’s meant no charges were brought.

    The star of *Jonathan Creek* and[ *QI*](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/qi-bbc-elves-40-best-facts-235022?ico=in-line_link) concludes his new follow-up book, *White Male Stand-Up*, with a short chapter on his father’s death in 2023. They’d been estranged for six years, he writes, and Davies never went to the funeral. How did he feel? “I don’t want to sound callous but I didn’t really break stride. I didn’t think, ‘good’. I just sort of thought he’d got away with it. Then the weird thing was when he died –he’d pleaded poverty all his life – he actually gave quite a decent inheritance, which he split equally between three children, including the one who took him to the police.”

    He laughs incredulously. “Even that felt vaguely like an attempted abuse right at the end from the other side. I mean, you wouldn’t leave any money to the one who had you arrested, would you? That’s weird. But I took it.” Well, surely that’s the least you deserve. “Yeah,” he says. “I earned that!”

    We’re sitting in the far corner of a north London pub on a quiet Friday afternoon. Davies is 59 now, and apart from his curly hair being grey and less voluminous, he looks pretty much the same as he ever did. Today, he’s easygoing, humorous, and softly spoken. It remains shocking that someone people know from the telly as so cheekily good natured and sweetly charming could have endured so much.

    He says writing *Just Ignore Him* was “positive overall. It lifted a fog, getting it all down on record, for me personally and for my family life,” he says of wife Katie and their three children Susie (15), Bobby (13), and Francis (9). He writes in *White Male Stand-up* that he’d thought about talking about the abuse in his comedy act for years, but just couldn’t face writing about it. “The inability to express is a very common thing,” he says. “Huge numbers of men who are assaulted or abused don’t speak for decades. Carrying that and managing that is a day-to-day thing. I guarantee that every single survivor of abuse will think about the abuse every single day. You’d swap that for anything.” He looks to the ceiling, exasperated. “Just take this memory out of my head.” His new stand-up show, *Think Ahead*, directly addresses the abuse for the first time, winning rave reviews when he debuted it in Edinburgh last month.

  2. That’s terrible. Just goes to show that you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

  3. wtf man what a fucked childhood, fair play for making something of himself with a start like that

  4. How can anyone harm their or any child. So fucked up. I can’t even compute it.

  8. That’s so horrible. I feel so sad and angry for him. And his “father” just got away with it.

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