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

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I used to live with the comedian Phil Wang... and he liked Irvine Welsh, and he would genuinely come into my room, and I would sort of translate it for him. I was nearly six and a half when she died. Six years, five months and 16 days, in fact, or six years and 169 days, or 2,361 days (including the leap years of 1968 and 1972). She was born on 5 February 1934 and was 38 when the leukaemia finished with her, so she would have been a white-haired old lady by now, if she’d lived, but she might have died another way, of course, a vase falling on her head or something. Iain says: I, like many people, fell in love with Irvine Welsh because of Trainspotting. This is a collection of short stories, and I remember when I bought this, I didn't even know you were allowed to do those - it felt like a sort of cheat. But I don’t remember her at the dining table, though we must have had so many meals together, Sunday roasts and teatimes. Through even the joyous and innocent memories, the pain of Davies's lifelong grief and profound betrayal is unfiltered, searing and beautifully articulated. Just Ignore Him is not only an autobiography, it is a testament to a survivor's resilience and courage.

Alan Davies, pictured in 1996, was not allowed to mourn his mother who died when he was only six. Credit: Larry Ellis/Getty It was Katie who wanted to recreate her own childhood, to some extent, and have a large family, "but I had nothing that I wanted to recreate. I had no childhood that I wanted to pass on." Could those bleak recollections of our dining table have overlaid memories of my mum, like the ash from Vesuvius that covered Pompeii? In the book you talk about reporting your father to the police in 2017, and his court case. This was as his Alzheimer’s disease was progressing. Is he still alive?

Who is Alan Davies' wife Katie Maskell?

Also running through the book is the intense loneliness felt by Davies as he carried his secret. He talks of an overwhelming desire to please others, which manifested in shoplifting on behalf of schoolfriends; of trying to share achievements with teachers he liked, only for it to come out as boasting; and playing the joker at home, the absence of laughter from his family only making him push harder. On top of the abuse, Davies endured the contempt of his siblings who looked on him mostly as an irritant. His father, brother and sister frequently formed a united front against him. Only later did he understand that this was a further manipulation by his father. That he was cast as unreliable, disruptive and a habitual liar – a caricature that would become self-fulfilling – meant that should he ever tell on his father, he would never be believed. In 2016, you started a part-time MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths University . Was that to help tell this story? Of course nothing is what it seems. It’s pertinent that the house is near Dracula’s cradle at Whitby; and when the paranormal research team arrive in the 70s strand, Loo and her savage sister Bee find Victorian clothes to dress up in, just like the blood-stained maidens in the books that fill their electricity-less farm-house. Of course Bee and Loo know how a haunting is meant to go: they are clever and utterly isolated, and they have a grudge to settle. But that isn’t all. Maybe my mother thought I was dead, since I wasn’t responding to her cries. She came barrelling into the living room at top speed, wearing an anxious look I hadn’t seen before. Crawling about beneath the table in the bay window, I’d become tangled among the gate-legs that pulled out either side to support a pair of drop leaves. As I bumped about, the vase on top fell over. A big, white, Art Deco thing, with bulging sides in sections, creating the impression of wavy lines going from top to bottom. Mum had put some flowers in it, yellow ones.

Painted battleship grey, the Palm House survived the bombing of London during the second world war. Incredibly, it was almost demolished in the 1950s due to its poor state of repair. In the 1980s it was restored after being dismantled like “an immense Meccano kit”. But the humidity means that a further restoration is due. In this age of climate crisis it is needed more than ever to teach new generations about the importance of rainforests and endangered palms. Shankar remains one of the most famous and influential Indians of modern times, perhaps second only to Gandhi himself. Every passing twang or drone of a sitar still evokes his name. As the man who brought the sub-continent’s classical music to the world and as George Harrison’s personal guru, Shankar enjoyed an almost saintly aura in the west. At home, public opinion was more tempered. India Today greeted his 60th birthday with the headline “Part sadhu, part playboy”, a nod to a globe-hopping lifestyle and Shankar’s complex, promiscuous romantic life. When Alan Davies was caught stealing and reprimanded by the police his father was determined that his brother should be told. What was his father’s motivation for this? Barnes is as attentive to what he can’t know as what he can. Highlighting the limitations of fact and empathy, his book flirts occasionally with the tone of his novel Flaubert’s Parrot, foregrounding the writer’s present and the difficulties of accessing the past, feeling the way to where truth might lie. That I needed love, affection and warmth coming my way, even if it was from strangers. I also did some cultural archaeology on myself, and realised I had playfulness from my mother, anger from my dad, and shamelessness from my childhood: the essential principles. Being witty helps too [smiles], but it’s not essential.Davies Just Ignore Him is not what a reader might expect from a showbiz autobiography. This is not least because it is so well written. At times there is an unexpected softness and tenderness to the text, especially when Davies is talking about his mother and describing what it is like when growing up in the 70s. Davies was born in Loughton, Essex, and spent his childhood years in Chingford. [3] When Davies was six, his mother died from leukaemia and he was raised by his father. [4] He was sexually abused by his father from age 8 to 13, as described in his book Just Ignore Him. [5] Davies also wrote that his brother and sister were turned against him, which began his strong desire to please others. [5] This led him to shoplift for schoolmates and play the joker at home. [5] Leave the World Behind was written before the coronavirus crisis and yet it taps brilliantly into the feeling of generalised panic that has attached itself to the virus and seems to mingle fears about the climate, inequality, racism and our over-reliance on technology. As the reader moves through the book, a new voice interjects, an omniscient narrator who begins to allow us gradual access to the terrifying events taking place across America.