Ivor

A lot of Freud’s assumptions about how personality is shaped from childhood have been discredited, but we still live in a post-Freudian universe in which interpretations of how we came to be who we are rely heavily on who your parents were. This is obviously not the book to suggest that parents have no impact on your early life, but I think what Freud leaves out is that, except obviously in the case of only children, others were involved in your upbringing: siblings. And there is a particular spin on that if your parental landscape was like mine, a combination of craziness and neglect. Your siblings – especially if you are lucky enough to have an older sibling, at least one who cares – operate as a buffer against that craziness and neglect. More: they operate as both a buffer and then a surrogate parent.

Which is quite something, given that Ivor is only eighteen months older than me. But I think it’s true. It’s true in the practicalities. Both Ivor and I went to secondary schools a fair journey from home. That meant getting up at about 6.30 a.m. in my case to get the Tube from Dollis Hill to Stanmore (on the Jubilee Line) to catch the 8 a.m. coach to school. Generally, Colin and Sarah did not rise from their beds to help with this. Instead, Ivor, who had his own journey to make to a different school, would be up with me and making breakfast for the two of us. When I think about my early life, most of the joy I can remember involves being with my brothers. The madness of our house was much mediated by that. Even in the earliest photos of us, it feels to me like I’m looking to him for guidance, for comfort, for protection.

And later on, when we would have to deal with my father’s dementia care, Ivor would be the more responsible one. He did more organizing, more sorting out of the complex bureaucracy of care. He was the parent. Still now: recently he told me someone had asked him what he felt when I first became well known, and he said ‘protective’.

I have the weird advantage, because I work on TV, of seeing the effect of this in action. By which I mean, when I see myself on the screen, I’m always struck by – beyond just looking like him – how much my mannerisms, my voice, my way of being, are a version of Ivor’s. I am much more like Ivor than I am like either of my parents. This would be true, I think, of a lot of brothers as regards their older brother, but sibling influence is still a lesser-considered aspect of personality.

Anyway, I have much to thank him for, which is why this book is dedicated to him.

Having said that, one time when we were about ten and eight, Ivor and I were playing football in Gladstone Park and some hard kids came up and asked him if they could throw me into some holly bushes. And he said yes. So, in terms of craziness and neglect, maybe he was influenced by my actual parents as well.