Picking up this book, his memoir about his childhood growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I wasn't expecting to find something so utterly heartbreaking and bleak. Davies took on a less comedic role in 2004, starring as Henry Farmer, a maverick barrister, in ITV Sunday night drama The Brief, for two series. He lost his lovely mum to leukemia at 6 years old and was brought up by his weird, cold father, who, unloving and unaffectionate, instead singled him out to be the recipient of his perverted sexual advances.

Even though they are set in the 16th century, the Britain we know is on every page like a watermark. Alcohol's an interesting one because it's everywhere you go and if you are having a period when you're not drinking, you'll get offered a drink every day.The title for this show came from a story he heard about a six-year-old girl being told off by her mother and responding "Life is pain". First in the Empire, then in the Church and its successor governments, what went on in the family stayed in the family. Alan Davies, to me, will always be Jonathan Creek - the BBC sluth with curly hair and a sardonic wit. When I came back into the room seconds later he remained in his chair with the dog on his lap while my little girl stood to one side crying, with blood streaming from her cheek.

In the book there is also the occasional lash out, as when he remembers the cruelty of not being allowed to mourn his mother dying (who was not informed, herself, that she was going to die) and the further attempt at concealment when that six-year-old boy is told that he cannot tell his baby sister that their mother has died. When Spectrum was offered the interview, there were no restrictions on what could be asked – indeed, the publicist's letter explicitly refers to "the abuse from his father" whom Davies years later "takes to court". But I wonder if I’ll ever be able to enjoy QI again, especially with Alan being the butt of everyone’s jokes.The strength and courage it must have taken to right this book is something that I cannot even fathom. Throughout the entire story; even the funny and joyful moments, the grief and hurt are just beneath the surface.

Marrying at the age of 40 (he says he wasn't ready before) and having a family of his own has been transformative. In 2011 Davies was also one of the judges on the ITV programme Show Me The Funny, a talent contest for new and aspiring stand-up comedy performers. I had no idea that his mother had died when he was six, or that his father had sexually abused him, as well as emotionally manipulating him and his siblings.The Sunday Times chose it as the best film and theatre book of 2020, in their list of "The 37 best books of 2020". The manic mop of curls – familiar from all those years in Jonathan Creek, as well as appearances in other "soft murder" dramas, the quiz show QI and a variety of panel shows – is mostly grey now but he looks younger than his decade, in a blue and white striped T-shirt. I have no doubt that his father was a manipulative, horrible man, but Davies fails to acknowledge that the people around him treated in not a nice way at times because, frankly, he was acting like a complete shit.

Q: So everybody who you were a fellow student with [at Goldsmiths] – or your tutors certainly – knew, since it was a memoir course, that you had been abused as a little boy? I have always been a fan of Alan’s and knew he had lost his mother at a very young age which is heart breaking, but to read what he went through in his childhood and lived with all his life is even more upsetting.But the only way to have kept the genie in the bottle is not to have released it in a book in the first place. I wanted this to be a record to last a long time and to last long enough so that when my children are old enough to read it, they will understand.