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He was right all along: the lessons we learnt from Dad
Father's Day is upon us and whether you celebrate it with abandon or believe it is nothing more than another American import designed solely to line the pockets of wily marketeers, it does perhaps serve the purpose of making us consider the men who helped bring us into being. Father-and-child relationships can be fraught – certainly the teenage years can test even the most placid of tempers – and who does not remember those years, scowling in indignation, resolutely promising to never, ever become like the man who had just given you a dressing down for some transgression. But that was then and this is now and, just in time for Father's Day, a recent survey has been published that finds that, as we get older, the vast majority (91 per cent) of us agree that, now we're older we realise our fathers were right about most things. That is certainly the consensus in The Telegraph offices... Melissa Twigg The moment I told my father I was moving to Hong Kong, he responded with the level of enthusiasm he once reserved for cleaning the hamster's cage. This was confusing: his own mother and stepfather had lived there for decades and used to wax lyrical about it, as if it was some kind of tropical utopia. My father, though? Not a fan. He found it too hot, too crowded and too frantic. At the time I was 29 and a magazine writer in Cape Town – a city that, while outrageously beautiful and full of people who look frighteningly good in swimwear – was starting to feel too sleepy. I was also recently heartbroken and suffering from the kind of emotional upheaval that could only be soothed by moving continents. My father was baffled. 'Why not just go back to London?' he kept asking. 'You're a journalist and you grew up in one of the great media hubs of the world – surely you should at least try working there?' Of course, I ignored him. Fast-forward a year and I was miserable in a cramped flat in Sai Ying Pun. I had a job that was superficially glamorous, working for a glossy society magazine, but it turns out that spending your days interviewing heiresses isn't all that fulfilling. Also, I discovered, I am not a natural party girl and would rather be reading a book than downing shots with junior bankers. After three years, I booked a one-way flight to Heathrow and exhaled audibly as the plane landed in familiar greyness. Back in London, I got a job on a broadsheet, a husband and, eventually, a baby – all those things I had wanted so fervently at 29, but which had felt so out of reach as I had wandered alone along the baking, crowded streets of a foreign city. And my dad? He never once said, 'I told you so'. Mick Brown It was the length of my hair and Mick Jagger. Those were the two main abrasions I recall in my relationship with my father. He had fixed opinions on both things. Girls had long hair, not his son. And whenever the Rolling Stones appeared on television there would be a sigh of disgust, almost equal to the volcanic eruption that would occur whenever George Brown, the bibulous Labour minister whom Dad felt disgraced the family name, hoved into view. Dad's father had walked out on my grandmother shortly after he was born, leaving her to bring up her only son on her own. Her family were Salvationist, and he was a dutiful son, who became a dutiful father. He had been brought up on the principles of self-improvement and working all the hours God sends – a very Dad phrase. He had left school at 15, and worked for a building company. Money was tight and on Sundays he tended the garden of a big house nearby, while I explored the shadowed corners of the huge lawns and counted planes flying overhead. On Remembrance Sunday, at 11am, Dad looked at his watch, put down his rake and we both stood silently in the garden, observing the minute's silence. A disciplined man then, but an extrovert who brought joy to everyone who knew him. The church was packed for his funeral. He died when I was 22, and there's not a day when I don't wish I'd have known him for longer, and could have told him he was right about the values of hard-work and self-reliance. He was wrong about Mick Jagger – or should I say Sir Mick Jagger – whom even Dad would have had to acknowledge became a pillar of the establishment. But he was right about his habitual instruction to 'get your hair cut', as much as I argued and protested at the time. Sadly, the passing years, and the receding hairline, have taken care of that. I think he'd finally approve. Celia Walden Now there's a piece of advice that could have been delivered in the Middle Ages. Over the past few years, I've had people burst out laughing when I've offered them cash. I've seen people back away, hands in the air, from the diseased little note I was offering up. But of all the great pieces of advice my dad [former Tory MP George Walden] has given me, this remains one of my favourites. It's about safety, he used to explain. About always having the ability to get home and never finding yourself relying on another human being at the end of a night out. It was also, I suspect, about a very healthy mistrust of technology, which has been proved right time and time again. The ATM isn't working, it's miles away or it's run out of cash, so again, you're at someone or something's mercy. As a teenager, I remember thinking it was a weird thing for Dad to be so stuck on. Now that I have a 13-year-old girl (to whom I have given the same advice) I can see that what he was really stuck on – and wanted for me above all else – was independence. William Sitwell When it came to our father's advice, my brother and I agreed on a simple strategy: always do the exact opposite of what he suggested. This, of course, was meant with great affection. My younger sister, elder brother and I all had wonderful relationships with him. And I say relationships, plural, because he had a wonderful ability to take a different approach to each of us, according to our character and needs. But when it came to strategising, from work to relationships, we enjoyed the conversations, we just didn't take the directions. My father, Francis, was born in 1935. He made, the obituary writer of this paper, noted: 'a very good fist of a difficult birthright', living in the shadow of towering ancestors. Neither a sportsman nor an academic star, he stayed under the radar at school and, eschewing the family bent of writing, he worked in the City, not as a financier but in public relations. He made very little money and we never looked to him for business advice. Or if he offered it, we'd politely ask if any of his friends might help us. And therein lies a clue to his great worth. He died in 2004, a death at 67 brought on by what I call long lunchitis. He was the arch practitioner of lunching. He was one of the best-connected men in the City. He was one of the most loved. At his memorial service a senior British politician told me: 'You know, your father had no enemies.' So where my Daddy's advice might have been lacking, he made up for this by his example. He was loved because he was companionable, affable, funny, generous, charming, self-deprecating, very huggable and always warm. He told great stories and he was always giggling. He was too modest to have ever said this himself, but if I imagine what his advice to me would be now, it would be to try to be a bit more like him. Rosa Silverman As a child, I felt certain I had a raw deal. My dad (in close collaboration with my mum) adhered to a style of parenting that my siblings and I called 'brown bread,' consisting of bans on various activities that constituted fun in the Eighties and Nineties. Watching Neighbours was out (not educational), likewise eating crisps (unhealthy), riding my bike without an ugly polystyrene helmet (unsafe) and playing with Barbies (too gendered, I think was the reason for that one, though confusingly I was allowed dolls). I have great lacunae in my cultural knowledge from that time, particularly where ITV was concerned. No, my dad wasn't religious. He was (and remains) an adventurous, fun-loving, idealistic hippie who envisaged a healthy, wholesome childhood at least for his first three offspring. (He and my mum gave up by the time of their fourth, who had an XBox, watched Friends as a toddler and essentially parented himself.) I was outraged at being deprived of these basic rights enjoyed by all my peers and tried not to look bemused when they discussed soap-opera plotlines, or over-excited when offered a Penguin bar. Then I became a parent myself and, oh boy, have I inflicted that intergenerational trauma on my own children. My dad was right, I discovered. Crisps actually aren't that good for you. Going anywhere at all without a helmet could be disastrous. It's kind of weird to give a plastic woman with lovely pert breasts to a young child to play with. I haven't managed to impose quite so wholesome a childhood on my kids as my dad managed, but the intention is there. They feel tortured by my insistence on vegetables and screen-time limitations. No one but them suffers such injustices, they believe. One day, perhaps, they'll realise: they have my father to blame. George Chesterton My father was not someone you could rely on to give sound advice, unless it was another lesson in how not to do something, but I still feel gratitude for how his determination to take notice of others' genius made my life so much richer. Listening is a tree that bears fruit many years later. My father's simple habit was always to highlight something he thought was wonderful for its own sake, something he thought I needed to take notice of. Like most children, I either paid the most perfunctory attention or just passed it by entirely. But this acknowledgement of the brilliance of others must have worked its way into my mind. For him, it was something like the effortless skill of Peter Sellers switching from one voice to another in The Goon Show, or Orson Welles grilling Paul Schofield in A Man For All Seasons. He would insist I listen or watch or read – probably a thankless task at the time. For me, it is especially powerful in music: in the call and response of A Boy Like That from West Side Story, Cole Porter's lyrics to You're The Top, Chaka Khan screaming perfectly in tune, or something really obvious like the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. That feeling can be summarised by Ian Dury (no stranger to brilliance himself) when he sang There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards. This is a lot more than just admiring something remarkable – it is being aware of the magic another human being can conjure and allowing it to give you comfort when you need it most. Brilliance is the word that always comes to mind, since what these moments provide are sources of light, little explosions that split the creation from the creator, who – let's be honest – are often not the best adverts for humanity themselves (Wagner, anyone?). Recognising the brilliance of others is also a healthy thing to do. It's an ego-less moment of reflection beyond your own petty concerns and something my dad and I would both have benefitted from having more of over the years. But we should give thanks where it's due, whether that's to those who inspire us or our fathers. Sometimes both. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Telegraph
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
He was right all along: the lessons we learnt from Dad
Father's Day is upon us and whether you celebrate it with abandon or believe it is nothing more than another American import designed solely to line the pockets of wily marketeers, it does perhaps serve the purpose of making us consider the men who helped bring us into being. Father-and-child relationships can be fraught – certainly the teenage years can test even the most placid of tempers – and who does not remember those years, scowling in indignation, resolutely promising to never, ever become like the man who had just given you a dressing down for some transgression. But that was then and this is now and, just in time for Father's Day, a recent survey has been published that finds that, as we get older, the vast majority (91 per cent) of us agree that, now we're older we realise our fathers were right about most things. That is certainly the consensus in The Telegraph offices... He told me I should try working in London – I ignored him Melissa Twigg The moment I told my father I was moving to Hong Kong, he responded with the level of enthusiasm he once reserved for cleaning the hamster's cage. This was confusing: his own mother and stepfather had lived there for decades and used to wax lyrical about it, as if it was some kind of tropical utopia. My father, though? Not a fan. He found it too hot, too crowded and too frantic. At the time I was 29 and a magazine writer in Cape Town – a city that, while outrageously beautiful and full of people who look frighteningly good in swimwear – was starting to feel too sleepy. I was also recently heartbroken and suffering from the kind of emotional upheaval that could only be soothed by moving continents. My father was baffled. 'Why not just go back to London?' he kept asking. 'You're a journalist and you grew up in one of the great media hubs of the world – surely you should at least try working there?' Of course, I ignored him. Fast-forward a year and I was miserable in a cramped flat in Sai Ying Pun. I had a job that was superficially glamorous, working for a glossy society magazine, but it turns out that spending your days interviewing heiresses isn't all that fulfilling. Also, I discovered, I am not a natural party girl and would rather be reading a book than downing shots with junior bankers. After three years, I booked a one-way flight to Heathrow and exhaled audibly as the plane landed in familiar greyness. Back in London, I got a job on a broadsheet, a husband and, eventually, a baby – all those things I had wanted so fervently at 29, but which had felt so out of reach as I had wandered alone along the baking, crowded streets of a foreign city. And my dad? He never once said, 'I told you so'. I wish I could have told him he was right about the values of hard-work and self-reliance Mick Brown It was the length of my hair and Mick Jagger. Those were the two main abrasions I recall in my relationship with my father. He had fixed opinions on both things. Girls had long hair, not his son. And whenever the Rolling Stones appeared on television there would be a sigh of disgust, almost equal to the volcanic eruption that would occur whenever George Brown, the bibulous Labour minister whom Dad felt disgraced the family name, hoved into view. Dad's father had walked out on my grandmother shortly after he was born, leaving her to bring up her only son on her own. Her family were Salvationist, and he was a dutiful son, who became a dutiful father. He had been brought up on the principles of self-improvement and working all the hours God sends – a very Dad phrase. He had left school at 15, and worked for a building company. Money was tight and on Sundays he tended the garden of a big house nearby, while I explored the shadowed corners of the huge lawns and counted planes flying overhead. On Remembrance Sunday, at 11am, Dad looked at his watch, put down his rake and we both stood silently in the garden, observing the minute's silence. A disciplined man then, but an extrovert who brought joy to everyone who knew him. The church was packed for his funeral. He died when I was 22, and there's not a day when I don't wish I'd have known him for longer, and could have told him he was right about the values of hard-work and self-reliance. He was wrong about Mick Jagger – or should I say Sir Mick Jagger – whom even Dad would have had to acknowledge became a pillar of the establishment. But he was right about his habitual instruction to 'get your hair cut', as much as I argued and protested at the time. Sadly, the passing years, and the receding hairline, have taken care of that. I think he'd finally approve. Always have enough cash on you for a taxi home Celia Walden Now there's a piece of advice that could have been delivered in the Middle Ages. Over the past few years, I've had people burst out laughing when I've offered them cash. I've seen people back away, hands in the air, from the diseased little note I was offering up. But of all the great pieces of advice my dad [former Tory MP George Walden] has given me, this remains one of my favourites. It's about safety, he used to explain. About always having the ability to get home and never finding yourself relying on another human being at the end of a night out. It was also, I suspect, about a very healthy mistrust of technology, which has been proved right time and time again. The ATM isn't working, it's miles away or it's run out of cash, so again, you're at someone or something's mercy. As a teenager, I remember thinking it was a weird thing for Dad to be so stuck on. Now that I have a 13-year-old girl (to whom I have given the same advice) I can see that what he was really stuck on – and wanted for me above all else – was independence. His advice to me would be to try to be a bit more like him William Sitwell When it came to our father's advice, my brother and I agreed on a simple strategy: always do the exact opposite of what he suggested. This, of course, was meant with great affection. My younger sister, elder brother and I all had wonderful relationships with him. And I say relationships, plural, because he had a wonderful ability to take a different approach to each of us, according to our character and needs. But when it came to strategising, from work to relationships, we enjoyed the conversations, we just didn't take the directions. My father, Francis, was born in 1935. He made, the obituary writer of this paper, noted: 'a very good fist of a difficult birthright', living in the shadow of towering ancestors. Neither a sportsman nor an academic star, he stayed under the radar at school and, eschewing the family bent of writing, he worked in the City, not as a financier but in public relations. He made very little money and we never looked to him for business advice. Or if he offered it, we'd politely ask if any of his friends might help us. And therein lies a clue to his great worth. He died in 2004, a death at 67 brought on by what I call long lunchitis. He was the arch practitioner of lunching. He was one of the best-connected men in the City. He was one of the most loved. At his memorial service a senior British politician told me: 'You know, your father had no enemies.' So where my Daddy's advice might have been lacking, he made up for this by his example. He was loved because he was companionable, affable, funny, generous, charming, self-deprecating, very huggable and always warm. He told great stories and he was always giggling. He was too modest to have ever said this himself, but if I imagine what his advice to me would be now, it would be to try to be a bit more like him. I hated being deprived of my teenage rights, but I'm inflicting the same wholesome trauma on my own children Rosa Silverman As a child, I felt certain I had a raw deal. My dad (in close collaboration with my mum) adhered to a style of parenting that my siblings and I called 'brown bread,' consisting of bans on various activities that constituted fun in the Eighties and Nineties. Watching Neighbours was out (not educational), likewise eating crisps (unhealthy), riding my bike without an ugly polystyrene helmet (unsafe) and playing with Barbies (too gendered, I think was the reason for that one, though confusingly I was allowed dolls). I have great lacunae in my cultural knowledge from that time, particularly where ITV was concerned. No, my dad wasn't religious. He was (and remains) an adventurous, fun-loving, idealistic hippie who envisaged a healthy, wholesome childhood at least for his first three offspring. (He and my mum gave up by the time of their fourth, who had an XBox, watched Friends as a toddler and essentially parented himself.) I was outraged at being deprived of these basic rights enjoyed by all my peers and tried not to look bemused when they discussed soap-opera plotlines, or over-excited when offered a Penguin bar. Then I became a parent myself and, oh boy, have I inflicted that intergenerational trauma on my own children. My dad was right, I discovered. Crisps actually aren't that good for you. Going anywhere at all without a helmet could be disastrous. It's kind of weird to give a plastic woman with lovely pert breasts to a young child to play with. I haven't managed to impose quite so wholesome a childhood on my kids as my dad managed, but the intention is there. They feel tortured by my insistence on vegetables and screen-time limitations. No one but them suffers such injustices, they believe. One day, perhaps, they'll realise: they have my father to blame. His determination to take notice of others' genius made my life so much richer George Chesterton My father was not someone you could rely on to give sound advice, unless it was another lesson in how not to do something, but I still feel gratitude for how his determination to take notice of others' genius made my life so much richer. Listening is a tree that bears fruit many years later. My father's simple habit was always to highlight something he thought was wonderful for its own sake, something he thought I needed to take notice of. Like most children, I either paid the most perfunctory attention or just passed it by entirely. But this acknowledgement of the brilliance of others must have worked its way into my mind. For him, it was something like the effortless skill of Peter Sellers switching from one voice to another in The Goon Show, or Orson Welles grilling Paul Schofield in A Man For All Seasons. He would insist I listen or watch or read – probably a thankless task at the time. For me, it is especially powerful in music: in the call and response of A Boy Like That from West Side Story, Cole Porter's lyrics to You're The Top, Chaka Khan screaming perfectly in tune, or something really obvious like the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. That feeling can be summarised by Ian Dury (no stranger to brilliance himself) when he sang There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards. This is a lot more than just admiring something remarkable – it is being aware of the magic another human being can conjure and allowing it to give you comfort when you need it most. Brilliance is the word that always comes to mind, since what these moments provide are sources of light, little explosions that split the creation from the creator, who – let's be honest – are often not the best adverts for humanity themselves (Wagner, anyone?). Recognising the brilliance of others is also a healthy thing to do. It's an ego-less moment of reflection beyond your own petty concerns and something my dad and I would both have benefitted from having more of over the years. But we should give thanks where it's due, whether that's to those who inspire us or our fathers. Sometimes both.
