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What can I say? It was an awful time. And I think it was really this third time that affected me the most. I was 16, so I was that bit older, and I knew more about what was going on, what it meant. And I guess at the back of my mind I couldn’t stop thinking that if someone keeps getting cancer they’re going to die. I think in some sense I’d made the decision that she, the person who’d been the constant reference point in my life, just wasn’t going to be around any more. And all those thoughts, well, it was just too much.

It was around this time that I left home. I also started taking drugs.

By now I was just of the attitude that all life’s painful and miserable, so why not take them? That’s why so many people do. Who can blame them? It’s a miracle more people don’t. The wonderful thing was that Mum got through all of that. But she then had to deal with me getting into trouble, whether it was coming down to get me from a police station or taking me to a hospital to have tests for things that she should never have had to be involved in. She probably used to look at me and think I was highly talented one day and mentally ill the next.

But after years of all that, I finally got the help I needed. With the huge support of my agent, John Noel, I did three months in drug rehabilitation and a month in a sexual-addiction clinic. Needless to say, in both places my childhood was the subject of hours of therapy. People asked me things like: “How are your parental relationships? How has all this affected you?”

I suppose what makes this interview so difficult is that it’s not a happy subject at all for me. It’s deeply sad — deeply painful. There ain’t many jaunty little anecdotes. It was just two people struggling to cope with adversity. And while we now have this incredibly intimate, loving bond, the truth is it’s founded on an awful lot of sadness. And as a result it’s made me very protective of Mum. Having said that, there is a part of me that’s worried about her reading my new book because, instead of her thinking she’s got this millionaire stand-up comic for a son, she’s gonna read things about me and think: “Oh, all these things are so awful.”

You know, now when I think about my family it really is just Mum. Sure, there’s my dad, who I love, and a tight ring of friends who are like family to me — John, Nik, Matt, Gee, Sharon, Nicola — but Mum is the nucleus of my being and that’s really somewhere beyond analysis. She’s so far ensconced in my psyche, so deeply encoded, so profoundly ingrained in who I am, that while I’m not usually stuck for words on anything, I find it difficult to use words in this context. She’s just at my very core and it’s probably the reason why it’s difficult for me to form a relationship beyond it.

The thing is, my mother is the sweetest, most sensitive, most forgiving person you could ever meet, with a wonderful sense of humour and this incredible warmth. And whenever life gets too crazy now, too mad, she’s the one who reminds me that sometimes it’s just nice to wake up to a beautiful morning. I guess when you have such a close brush with death, you see the beauty that the rest of us take for granted. I also think that people have a tendency to confuse her gentleness with a lack of strength. Nothing could be further from the truth. Her courage, her endurance — how she’s dealt with everything that’s happened to her and everything that’s happened to me — proves it. In the words of Morrissey: “It’s so easy to laugh. It’s so easy to hate. It takes strength to be gentle and kind.”

My mother has always supported me in everything I’ve reached for, and in turn she thinks everything I do is special, magnificent — spectacular. Right down to those stools I used to deliver. I’m sure her belief in me has given me a great sense of knowing I can achieve in life all the things I want to. And now all I want is for her to be happy, and I’ll do whatever I can to ensure that. Her love has always been unconditional. And I know it always will be. As will mine.

Interviews by Ria Higgins. Main portrait: Muir Vidler

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