Although I’m perfect now, I was a selfish baby man well into my twenties, and never seriously considered having children for a second. After all, I’d read the Philip Larkin poem and I’d seen what having children did to my mum and dad. They just argued all the time and never seemed to have any fun at all. No thanks.
One sunny Britpop day towards the end of the Nineties, I bumped into my old girlfriend Lottie in South London. I hadn’t seen her since we were teenagers and I was surprised when she told me she was married with two young kids. My friends hadn’t started doing that kind of thing yet. ‘You should come round and meet them,’ said Lottie.
‘Sure, I’d love to spend a boring, noisy afternoon seeing how you’ve succumbed to your societal programming and thrown your life away,’ I thought. But I didn’t want to be rude, so I said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely! I’ll pop by tomorrow, if I’m not too busy.’
The next day I took a break from playing Super Aleste on the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) and cycled over to the small terraced house in Tooting where Lottie lived, arriving just as her husband Gavin was giving the two toddlers their lunch.
The first thing that hit me on entering the house was the overpowering funk of cheese with notes of vomit and poo, none of which I have ever enjoyed. Gavin (who seemed nice but a bit sensible) was feeding cheesy ravioli to the toddlers, and though they were certainly sweet, they had yet to embrace the concept of table manners. It didn’t help that Gavin would occasionally scoop up a handful of ravioli and dump it on the Formica tabletop in front of the younger child, whereupon she would spank the gooey pasta delightedly, then smear it on her face. I tried to laugh, but I’d begun to feel queasy and had to stop breathing through my nose.
I asked if I could use the toilet, and when the door was safely closed behind me I took a deep breath, then immediately regretted it. Over in the corner in an uncovered basket was a pile of dirty clothes topped by a pair of children’s shorts that had been dramatically soiled (at least, I assumed they belonged to one of the children). ‘OK,’ I thought, ‘so Gavin and Lottie are anti nappies, but are they also anti basket lids, clean air and civilised table behaviour?’ I said my goodbyes and cycled away, breathing fresh air luxuriously, resolving as I did so never to have children as it was just far too smelly.
A few years later I got married, and in all the excitement I forgot I was still selfish, immature and ignorant. When the subject of children came up I thought, ‘Sure, why not? It’ll be fun! My wife can teach them the important stuff and deal with the stinks (though cheesy ravioli will never be on the menu, the tabletop, the faces or anywhere else in the house), and I’ll get them into music and films and be their best friend. Easy.’
Being pregnant for nine months forced my wife to make the transition from a life of staying up late, boozing and doing whatever else she wanted with her free time to an altogether more sober routine. I knew it would probably be good if I made that transition along with her, but I decided against it. I thought it was important that at least one of us should carry on having a good time. As a result, during our first few years of parenthood, we ended up leading lives that sometimes felt quite separate, and when we were together, much as I Ioved the additional company of our little sons and their sweet-smelling soft heads, I couldn’t help missing the days when hanging out with my wife would involve friends, alcohol and laughter, with shitting, puking and screaming reserved for special occasions.
Time with my wife in those toddler days often meant a trip to a large indoor space that smelt of feet where we took it in turns to ensure that our children didn’t eat too much of the faeces in the ball pit. Back home, our reward would be an episode of a box set after the angels had been successfully neutralised, but we’d be doing well if we got through 20 minutes before the ever-present baby monitor exploded into life, green lights flashing, as harshly distorted wails drowned out the screams of whoever Jack Bauer happened to be torturing.
And that was on the good days, when no one was ill, I didn’t have a tax bill I couldn’t pay and I wasn’t depressed after another brilliant Adam-and-Joe TV pitch had been rejected by some barely sentient TV executive because it wasn’t enough like Banzai.
RAMBLE
I thought I should check my recollection of these toddler times with my wife. She says: ‘Maybe I’ve forgotten about the bad bits in the rosy haze of middle age, but I don’t remember the early years being as crap as you do. I loved the early bit when they were tiny. The mundane routine was preferable to the office, any day. If I could have had ten more babies, I would. I probably still could. I also don’t remember you not liking it as much as I did, or going to nearly as many children’s play areas with stinky ball pits as you are making out – although I suppose you’re hamming it up in order to make this part of the book more entertaining.’
Of course, there was more to those early days of parenthood than bad smells, screaming and a vague worry that I’d made a terrible mistake. From time to time I got to be a FUN DAD. I would announce to my wife that I needed a break from mining nuggets of timeless comedy and was going to do the supermarket shop with the boys while she enjoyed a couple of hours of alone time. Choking back tears of gratitude at my thoughtfulness, my wife would hand me a hastily scribbled list and off we’d go to the Clapham branch of Sainsbury’s, FUN DAD and sons on a shopping adventure.
Within minutes of our arrival at the supermarket, the boys would be clapping their hands with delight as their FUN DAD spun them around in the trolley. When they’d start to lose consciousness, I’d lean on the handle and we’d chat as we cruised down the aisles, them being sweet and naïve, me funny and wise, ensuring that the humour and the wisdom were delivered loud enough for passing shoppers to hear and be delighted by. I imagined them thinking, ‘Wow, I wish my dad had been as fun as him. If only there were more parents like that, the world would be a better place.’
Back in the car, I’d reach back and give the boys’ hands a squeeze the way my dad used to when we were little. Then, unlike my dad, I’d connect my first-generation iPod to the stereo and play a superb selection of left-field music sprinkled with some mainstream classics as part of the boys’ cultural education. Sometimes, if a song came on that contained particularly strong language, I’d ride the volume knob and replace the expletives with something child-friendly.
The first time I did this was during the track ‘Range Life’ by Pavement, which contains a well-enunciated ‘FUCK’ towards the end of an otherwise very pretty song. This live censorship technique was the inspiration for a sketch I did in 2006 on a BBC Three show called Rush Hour, in which I played a dad on the school run singing along with N.W.A.’s ‘Fuck tha Police’ but replacing the most explicit and angrily racial lines with blandly pro-establishment, kiddie-friendly lyrics.
RAMBLE
This sketch might now be considered an act of gross cultural appropriation (or ‘hip-hopriation’? Pffft), but in a way, that’s what it was about. A white, middle-class parent excited by music that has no relevance to his own life but wanting to pass on his enthusiasm to his son. Meanwhile, Mum (played in the sketch by actor and comedian Kerry Godliman) looks on disapprovingly.
After the sketch went out in 2007, someone uploaded it to YouTube where it found an audience among the N.W.A. fan community, many of whom, unsurprisingly, had never heard of me and were unsure how to feel about the sketch, as some of the comments made clear:
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THENOTORIOUSKRP hahahaah very funny. I have the urge to slap the guy for taking the song and its message and changing it… But still, its funny |
It hadn’t crossed my mind that people might be offended by the ‘Help the Police’ sketch. I thought it was clear the laughs were at the expense of the middle-class wannabe gangster dad. For some people, however, ‘Fuck tha Police’ is a protest song that articulates decades of fury and frustration with institutional racism and is too important to be bowdlerised (that’s right, I said ‘bowdlerised’), even for a solid-gold comedy classic.
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13STYLEZ gay. the men gay the boy gay the women ähh bitch coz NWA NOT Firndly to police |
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HALFLIFEGTA FUCK THE POLICE not help em. This is gay as hell. |
Comedy can be maddeningly confusing. Do I think people should help a racist cop? No. What about fucking a nice cop? I wouldn’t advocate that either. Either way, when it comes to deciding whether to help or fuck the police, I don’t think this sketch should be used to formulate policy.
Sub-Ramble
Back in the late 2000s a lot of people were still using the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘not very good’. Many of them would argue that they were not homophobic and that the word had simply acquired two distinct meanings. I was one of those people, until one day I described something a bit crap as ‘gay’ while talking to a friend of mine who is himself a homosexualist. He looked crestfallen and I squirmed. I like the guy a lot and the last thing I want to do is make his crests fall. To my shame, I was too embarrassed to apologise at that moment, but I’ve never used the word that way again. Disappointingly, I still haven’t received any kind of prize.
Meanwhile a professional football joins the YouTube discussion about my ‘Help the Police’ sketch:
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PROFESSIONALFOOTBALL the original is better |
Hard to argue with that. In my defence, though, ‘Help the Police’ has not replaced the original version, which is still widely available.
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GRE0006 if I was in nwa I wold kill him |
Shit. gre0006 wants to ‘wold kill’ me. This is how gangs used to get rid of their enemies in the ‘wolden days’, i.e. take them out to a range of hills consisting of open country overlying a base of limestone or chalk and shoot them in the hillocks.
At this point, dookiefinder187 (the 187th of the proud dookiefinder clan) enters the discussion:
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DOOKIEFINDER187 fuckin white fag, your not from the CPT, if eazy e was alive he come burn down your house with you in it and you be saying ‘i’m a pussy, police please help me’ |
Setting aside the casual homophobia and minor grammar issues, I understand dookiefinder187’s frustration. Compared to the average resident of Compton (the CPT), my life has been one of unearned comfort and opportunity and, yes, I would certainly call the emergency services if Eazy-E came back to life, got the train out to Norwich, found our house and set fire to it while my wife, my children, Rosie and I were still inside, but I don’t think I’d start the call by saying, ‘Hello! I’m a pussy, police please help me.’ I’m not sure how it works in the CPT, but in south Norfolk the emergency services will usually respond even if you don’t humiliate yourself on the phone first. Luckily 2pac2590 comes to my defence:
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2PAC2590 @ DOOKIEFINDER187 wow your so fucking smart dis is a fuckin’ joke. eazy e would probobly laugh. |
Despite this reassurance from one of the extended 2pac family, dookiefinder187 is still worried:
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DOOKIEFINDER187 @ 2PAC2590 I hope your fucking right cus this white fag could be making fun of this song |
fender3924 also attempts to mollify dookiefinder187:
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FENDER3924 @ DOOKIEFINDER187 Wow broham, shut the fuck up, its supposed to be funny, not serious… Chill out. |
Thanks for the support, fender3924. And good to be reminded that if you want someone to chill out, the best way is just to tell them to ‘shut the fuck up’. At this point dookiefinder187 has had enough and signs off with:
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DOOKIEFINDER187 man fuck you asswipes its no joke if a white guy is rapping. |
One day I was on a solo supermarket mission and in the car park I bumped into Matt, an older friend of mine who also has a couple of children. Matt asked after my boys, then aged two and four. ‘Oh, you know,’ I replied, ‘they’re exhausting, but wonderful! How about your two?’
‘The youngest one’s still pretty sweet,’ said Matt, ‘but the 15-year-old is a real prick most of the time now.’
I laughed, but I thought that was a harsh thing to say, even as a joke. I couldn’t conceive of saying something similar about my wonderful fellows. ‘As long as they always know how much I love them,’ I told myself, ‘I’ll never need to joke about them being pricks, because they never will be.’
Fast-forward ten years. My eldest son is now 16. I wouldn’t call him a real prick, but he does a very good impression of one from time to time. Though a 16-year-old boy treating his parents as if they were the world’s biggest shit bags is far from uncommon, for a FUN DAD like me, it was still a nasty shock when it began. I spun this guy around in a supermarket trolley, for crying out loud! I provided a PG introduction to the music of Pavement and other seminal indie bands and I told him his drawings and Minecraft constructions were incredible, even though many of them were offensively inept and totally impractical. What more was I supposed to do?
The other day I asked him to sweep up the kitchen and he stared at me as if I’d just proposed selling him to sex traffickers. Looking in to see how he was doing after a few minutes, I found him long-faced, nearly crying, as he moved the broom over random sections of the floor with one hand, the other hand in his pocket (in the sweeping style of Alanis Morissette). I waited as long as I was able, then, helplessly channelling a million dead dads, I actually said the words: ‘Come on, put your back into it!’
In moments like these I have to stop myself reminding Grumpy Longface of all those times he promised me he’d never be like this. He was the nine-year-old who thrust his hand into mine and squeezed it gently as we queued for a scary theme-park ride, and when I said, ‘Promise me you’ll never get too cool to hold my hand,’ he promised before adding, ‘I wish I could never grow up.’ I mean, this guy is a total liar.
The bad sweeper’s brother is now 14. His default household demeanour is such a cliché of teenage truculence that one day I showed him one of Harry Enfield’s ‘Kevin the Teenager’ sketches on YouTube, thinking that seeing his shtick so precisely reproduced might give him a new perspective on it. ‘Ha-ha! Omigod, you’re right, Dad! The way he flies into a sullen rage if he isn’t allowed to do exactly what he wants! The expression of utter boredom and contempt! The pathological selfishness! Yeah, fair play, I am exactly like that sometimes, but you know that basically I love you and Mum and I’m grateful for everything you do for me, don’t you?’
That I genuinely imagined my 14-year-old son might react that way to a ‘Kevin the Teenager’ sketch is one of the many indications I’ve had over the years that a FUN DAD is not necessarily the same thing as a GOOD DAD. The older the children get, the more I feel like neither.
My son watched the ‘Kevin the Teenager’ sketch with no readable expression whatsoever. I may as well have been showing him a video about how to file a tax return. When it was over he nodded, then asked if he could leave. ‘Sure,’ I said, feeling bad. ‘Hey, look, I’m sorry I showed you that sketch. I thought it would be funny, but actually it was like I was using YouTube to take the piss out of you, which isn’t what I wanted to do. It’s just that, to me, it doesn’t seem long ago that you enjoyed being with us, and I would make you laugh, and you thought I was great, and then gradually all that went away and now what’s left is me telling you to take out your AirPods when I’m talking to you and that cereal doesn’t count as a healthy meal and that if you create a moat of urine around the base of the toilet, it’s reasonable to expect you to clean it up. Meanwhile, you’ve acquired the ability to see all my shortcomings, and they must be as unattractive to you as the weird pet-shop smell in your room is to me. And before too long you’ll leave home, and though you’ll come round when you need to do some washing or re-up from the cereal stash, after a while you’ll get bored of us nagging you for not looking after yourself properly, especially as me and Mum don’t really look after ourselves properly either, and then you’ll only come round at Christmas and then not even Christmas. I should know, because that’s what I did. Anyway, I thought showing you the “Kevin the Teenager” sketch might give a glimpse of all that for some reason.’
I didn’t say any of that, obviously. What do you think I am, some kind of self-absorbed, hyper-sensitive child man who worries he’s making all the same mistakes as his own dad except in a more low-brow way?
RAMBLE
One of the many worries I have about being a parent is that the life of privilege my children enjoy will make them spoilt and obnoxiously entitled. A friend of mine told me about a time he was at a busy play area in London, talking with his young son about the family’s plans for the holidays, only to have the boy shout loudly, ‘Oh, we’re not going to bloody Antigua again, are we?’
Back when Joe and I were on the radio in 2011, another friend forwarded me an email they’d received from their 13-year-old daughter whose birthday was coming up and who wanted to ensure she got what she wanted. I asked if I could read it out on air and my friend agreed as long as I was careful to keep their daughter anonymous.
The email read:
If you want to spend your money wisely I suggest you stick to this list and do NOT buy anything other than the items on it, unless you see something which I may like, in which case, ask me first, otherwise don’t get it at all …
RIHANNA TICKETS, MUST BE AT LEAST 2, ONE FOR ME AND A FRIEND.
A NICE DRESS – LIKE MY GREY AMERICAN APPAREL ONE, BUT SLEEVELESS.
Pretty summery top – NOT a shirt, not a tee, must be pretty, show me what it looks like first.
Earrings – they must not be my main present though.
BIKINI – I MUST TRY THESE ON AND RECOMMEND TO YOU, SO BE PATIENT FOR LINKS.
Pants – from Topshop, VERY small present.
No piece of jewellery to be my main present as it’s small and I don’t wear jewellery.
Make-up – Possibly some foundation, but I must recommend colour, brand and type.
Spare money? Always acceptable.
For someone to paint my wooden desk for me – however this must be done well and cannot be my only present from this person.
To be allowed to have the whole cupboards and put the towels etc in the chest of drawers in my room and move that into the spare room. NO books unless requested.
FISH – MUST INCLUDE TANK, AUTOMATIC WATER CLEANER, 2 PRETTY FISH, AND DECORATIONS FOR INSIDE.
This is pretty much everything. Stick to this list and I will be very happy in the morning. To make me as happy as possible you will need to buy me at least three of my most desired things (in CAPS).
When my own teenagers are at their most unreachable and obnoxious, I think about this email and it cheers me up, not because they’re necessarily less spoilt, but because the girl who sent that birthday list is now in her early twenties and is charming, considerate and in no way entitled. And I’m not just saying that because she may read this.
A few days after the ‘Kevin the Teenager’ incident, I’m driving my 14-year-old to his friend’s house. A year ago I would have been in FUN DAD chat mode, making the most of an opportunity for a bit of one-on-one conversation time with one of my children, but a series of chippy exchanges during recent car journeys has encouraged me to scale back my ambitions. Now the AirPods nestled in his ears make it clear that, in case I’m in any doubt, conversation with his father is not top of the agenda.
Nevertheless, I can’t help asking, ‘What are you listening to?’
‘Spotify,’ he sighs, continuing to look out of the window.
‘Yes, but I was wondering what actual music you were listening to?’
‘Have you heard of Q-Tip?’ he replies.
‘Yes, I’m familiar with Q-Tip. He’s very good. Joe always loved A Tribe Called Quest. Put it through the speakers.’ Soon ‘Breathe and Stop’ fills the car and I try to imagine how exciting those sounds must be to him, even with his trying-too-hard-to-be-FUN DAD listening. I try to recall the most thrilling piece of music I heard when I was his age.
‘Have you heard “Green Onions” by Booker T. & the MGs?’ He shakes his head and starts tapping at his device. I look over, expecting to see him sexting or trading dank memes, but he’s on Spotify calling up “Green Onions”. Suddenly giddy with the joy of connection, I turn up the volume for the arrival of history’s most exhilaratingly primordial Hammond organ figure.
When it hits, I resist the temptation to watch his face as he experiences it for the first time. At the first guitar solo he nods and says, ‘It’s really good,’ and I take this as my cue to turn my head and see that he’s trying not to smile.
‘He’s trying not to smile!’ I say.
He smiles.