The Long And Winding Road was his favourite song and I have only just realised

("The Long And Winding Road" was his favourite song and I have only just realised the "leads me to your door" significance while writing this.) We couldn't talk, of course. I was 18 and crap and he was the father of an 18-year-old and therefore even crapper. But he did put me up in his study and he did leave the drawer with the divorce papers open and I did read them and I got a better picture about it all But it still didn't really make sense. Why did it matter who had slept with whom and all that stuff? All I remembered were those years when I wished he would come in his Superdad outfit and rescue me - from my mum's deadbeat boyfriends, the rubbish schools, the bullying.But what really changed everything is what happened when the grandparents turned up on Christmas Day.

We were standing at the door and they were coming up the path. Dad must have been terrified because just as they were there by the doormat he leant close to my ear and said, "You wouldn't mind pretending to be my second cousin for the duration, would you old man?" in that wizard-prangy Goons voice I remembered from before.He had left it until the last second and when you think what he must have had to go through to say that, that's when I regret that it was really the only sentence that passed his lips in 30 years that was anything to do with him and me. Still, at least he did better than I did because the only response I could manage was "fine" Lads, eh?So that's why I miss my dad Because we got only as far as being second cousins. I went over last summer and saw where he was buried and felt nothing very much. I wasn't angry about it as such - that was what he had to do to get what he wanted I have done the same, I suppose.

I was prepared to tell my kids that they weren't enough to keep me any more, that I had found someone more important, ie me I have learnt from my past I see my boys two or three times a week at least I would never leave our town while they're still there We have got past the second cousin stage. But, then again, who knows what they will be writing about me in 30 years' time.I try to talk to them about what has happened and try to reassure them all the time, but they don't seem to want to go into it in any detail. Perhaps the reason I feel such a need to go over and over it with them is that I never had the chance to with my father, and maybe the boys don't want to because they don't need to I don't know. And to be honest, it is a relief that I can't get a word out of them about it.

I understand Dad better now.The second cousin thing has never left me - it has made me what I am I suppose it is a straightforward case. Lie down on the couch please: rejection at ages eight and 18 leads to fear of rejection which in turn leads to desire to be loved and accepted by everybody which leads to emotional masochism tinged, at moments of extreme confusion and pressure, with self- destructive and uncharacteristic behaviour. That'll be pounds 250 please.Fragile on the outside, squidgy in the middle. Sometimes, when I am being most like a puppy craving attention, when I hear my accent changing to fit in, I can still hear my dad whispering that request in my ear and I want to hold him hard and say "No, Dad, I'd rather not".. It has to be said that this is not Ruby Wax's greatest fashion moment. In black-and-white striped pyjamas from hell, she and her fellow chain gangers shuffle down a street in Arizona with their ankles manacled. Can this dishevelled redhead, briefly silenced by the effort of keeping up with the chain gang, really be the same quick-witted smart-arse who foraged in Fergie's fridge? In the first episode of the comedian's latest television project, Ruby's American Pie, Wax has chosen wholly new territory: the female chain gang.