Relative values: Stephen Fry (part 1)

I lived in fear of my father until I was about eighteen, fear of the eyebrow and the sniff. In public I had to swallow twice, then cough, and the voice would come out all croaky whenever I tried to speak in his presence. It was very hard to prove myself because he did tend to frown at anything I did with any degree of competence, like learning the entire Guinness Book of Records by heart.

Relative values

 The television used to be in my father’s study, so I'd have to sneak in when he wasn't there. I think he found my addiction annoying because, as a child, he'd had a phenomenal range of interests, like building speedboats and stripping down motorbikes. Although I was an indiscriminate viewer, I did always want to be part of television. I was an insomniac as an adolescent and I spent a lot of time listening to the BBC World Service. I'm sure that's how I came by my rather strange voice.

Mу father is a great problem-solver. Just belore I was about to sit my maths O-level he found out I could barely add up; I simply hadn't grasped the principles. So he set out to solve the problem of my number blindness, and within a week we were doing things that would have been part of the A-level syllabus.

He balled me out for the minor things, like watching too much television and my messy bedroom, but the big things were always a matter for serious talks. To their eternal credit my parents were much more concerned about my happiness and state of mind than whether or not I was embarrassing their friends.