He was first introduced to me as a friend from work named Brian. I was six or seven at the time, and my mum gave me no indication that this particular Brian was to help bring me up and be my primary male role-model.
What was this creature? I know now he was six years my mum’s junior, but he looked younger than that to me, with his long hair, pallor and spectacles. He drove a little green Mini. My dad, who’d been gone a couple of years, drove a Ford Cortina. A dad’s car.
Brian wore a denim jacket. Sometimes there were badges on it. Mysterious messages in fancy, curly writing. Led Zeppelin. Yes. One had a cartoon pig in cape and superhero pose. Wonder Warthog. When he said stuff, you’d never know if he was being serious, which made it kind of fun.
They might not have it quite as bad as stepmothers, those murderous crones of so many of our favourite fairytales, but stepfathers don’t get such great press, either.
I soon discovered the house he was sharing at the time was an Aladdin’s cave of junk, including a stack of Mad magazines that became my treasure trove when he and my mum bought a house a couple of years later. This guy was cool. When I grew up, I was going to drive a Mini.
He was “Uncle Brian” by then. My sister and I played along with that for a while, but soon he was back to being Brian, and has stayed that way, though these days he also answers to “grumpy grandad”.
They might not have it quite as bad as stepmothers, those murderous crones of so many of our favourite fairytales, but stepfathers don’t get such great press, either.
Show me a stepdad in a rom-com and I’ll show you an uptight stooge who’s going to be the butt of every joke and lose the girl in the end.
Then you’ve got Robert De Niro terrorising a teenage Leonardo Di Caprio in This Boy’s Life, of course. And that whole Daddy Warbucks/Annie scene always seemed kind of shady, let’s be frank.
Matters aren’t helped by real-life abusive and homicidal stepdads grabbing the bleaker headlines from time to time: ‘Cinderella Syndrome’ and all that.
That vast majority of stepfathers quietly bringing up children to the best of their abilities, helping them navigate the mean streets of young adulthood, loving them, pure and simple, go unnoticed.
Step-parents affect the way their kids view the world and behave within it, just as much as any “real” parent. They live on through those kids, just the same.
I worshiped Brian, growing up. Yes, he could sometimes act what our mum (rest her soul) would call “a miserable sod”, but he was just as often hysterically funny, and kept a big heart under wraps.
I used to go and watch him play table-tennis in local tournaments. He’d often win them. He was a highly and slightly incongruously competitive and intense player. The hairband he wore gave him a look of the then ascendant John McEnroe, though Brian restricted himself to shouting bizarre utterances such as “Mucus!” or “Codwangle!” during moments of frustration, stopping short of umpire abuse.
I would be the only spectator at these things, which would take place a 20-minute drive from home in drafty community halls. His earnest little cheer-squad, up past bedtime on a Wednesday evening, loving every minute.
I’m lucky. These days I’m close to both my biological dad and Brian, or as close as I can be from the other side of the world. I look and sound quite a bit like the former, but when it comes to who I am, there’s plenty of Brian in me.
Big up to fathers in all forms this Sunday who are doing it the right way, with love.
He gave me a love of music. A football team which continues to be the bane of my existence. A dry wit and daftness. Kurt Vonnegut. A taste for pomegranates. A penny-pinching disposition and detached cynicism (yeah, thanks for those).
He also gave me the deviously sadistic “Count Tickula” game (hide-and-seek with a silent, stalking tickler-vampire - it’s in the eyes as much as the fingers), which I now inflict on my own children. Maybe, one of these days, I’ll get to be a grumpy granddad myself.
The nature-nurture tussle has got to be a close run thing. Step-parents affect the way their kids view the world and behave within it, just as much as any “real” parent. They live on through those kids, just the same.
Big up to fathers in all forms this Sunday who are doing it the right way, with love.
