Playback: My Dad, The Stranger

so my dad was in the navy um so we grew up in Portsmouth but I remember we lived in this like lovely house at the top of a hill and I loved it and it had like a sandbox at the back that I absolutely loved and it was it was by far the my favorite house I've ever lived in it was amazing

and who was in your family

So it's just me, my dad, my mum and my two old brothers.

There's a significant age gap between me and my brothers.

They are 16 months apart.

So when you were the baby around the house, were they good with you? No,

they absolutely hated me.

I remember at one point, I think one of them actually threw a cricket ball at my face with just pure frustration.

It was like...

There was this new thing that was just taking up everybody's attention and they were like, no, it's just us.

Like, what is this person doing? With such a big age gap, I was treated very quickly as an only child.

My brothers were at boarding school when I was born, so it was just me at home.

And it really kind of laid the precedent for me being kind of really special in the family.

But then when you were two, your parents divorced.

Yeah so I don't actually have any memories when they were together at all because dad being in the navy he was actually away for most of the time when I was younger.

The earliest memory I have is actually moving out of that lovely house and I remember I was like playing a game of hide and seek with the movers and I was like hiding under the piano that sat in the hall and I could just hear my mum like weeping in the dining room and I was like this is strange but we all stayed at the Marriott hotel that night because we couldn't move into our house the next day and it's like my brother's kind of snuck me into the jacuzzi and they're like if anybody asks you're seven

it's mad that he tells you remember isn't it it's like your mother's crying in one room but you remember the Marriott jacuzzi

I

didn't sleep in my own bed till I went to boarding school at the age of eight.

Where were you sleeping?

Slept at my mum's.

Every night.

She got a job when we moved.

She started working in London.

And I think I got such a bond with her in those early years of my life.