What would my Dad have made of polenta?

MY DAD died 25 years ago this week. He had just turned 60 and Ihad just turned 14. He keeled over unexpectedly on the train fromLiverpool to London, shortly after leaving Lime Street Station. Mymum and I got the news that evening. Two grim-looking police officersrang our front doorbell during And Mother Makes Five, starring WendyCraig.

I saw my mum on Sunday, the anniversary of his death, but I don'tknow if she was aware of the day's significance. She didn't mentionit, and nor did I. She got remarried in 1981 to a kind and generousman, and it never seems right to talk about my dad in the presence ofmy stepfather. In any case, I have always found it hard to talk abouthim to my mum. I don't know why. I suppose a psychotherapist wouldflush it out. It goes right back to 1976, when I probably suppressedit in order to deal with it.

That said, I stayed off school for more than two weeks, and when Iwent back I was disturbed to find that nobody mentioned my father'sdeath, having apparently been advised not to by a teacher. The onlyone who did was Pete Venables, a good mate then and now. He muttered"sorry about your dad, Bri," and I loved him for it.

I will regret to my own dying day never knowing my father on a man-to- man basis, not least because lots of people held me gravely bythe hand, at his funeral and afterwards, and told me he was a man'sman. I didn't know what that meant at the time. I suppose that Iassumed it was better than being a ladies' man.

I write about him now not to be maudlin, but rather to celebratethe fact that, as a great joke-teller and raconteur, he enriched mostof the lives he touched.

I had always hoped to celebrate his life by making enough money tosponsor a horse race in his name, the Allen Viner Memorial Chase orsome such, for he was a horse-racing nut and an inveterate gambler.By the time that I was 10 years old, I had accompanied him to most ofthe race tracks in Britain. But that now seems unlikely, so thiscolumn will have to do.

He did not, in truth, enrich all the lives he touched. For a fewpeople, he held an irrational loathing, and rarely bothered toconceal it. One of them, uncomfortably, was the father of a friend ofmine.

Another, for reasons I could never fathom, was the actor StewartGranger. "Bloody awful actor," he would say, rising from his ParkerKnoll armchair - which, re-upholstered, is about the only familyheirloom I possess - and turning the television off whenever aStewart Granger film came on. Curiously, I now find that I have thesame irrational aversion to Richard Gere. The only difference is thatI don't have to leave my armchair. I can zap the bugger with theremote control.

Remote control units weren't around in 1976, or at least not inour house. When I think of my dad - as I do, if not on a daily basis,then several times a week - it is usually to consider how bewilderedhe would be if he were to reappear today. Pound coins, Channel 4,microwaves, Jerry Springer, the Falklands War, polenta, cashpointmachines, digital telly, the internet for heaven's sake: all of thesewould certainly take some explaining.

On the other hand, I do find it comforting that he would still befamiliar with so much. A Labour(ish) government, a prattling WillieCarson, unrest all around the Middle East, industrial unrest andstrikes at home, concern about the provinciality of a new Americanpresident (for Texas baseball addict George W Bush, read Georgiapeanut farmer Jimmy Carter), the 2.45 at Haydock... on reflection,he'd probably settle in pretty quickly.