Dad, the singing postie with a real lust for life
DAD was one of life’s great personalities. He was funny, energetic and charming and loved good malt whisky, cigarettes and Elvis Presley, but most of all, he loved my mum.
He was born in Dumfries – an enormous 10lb baby – and grew to 6ft 2in, despite both parents barely tipping 5ft 4in.
Naturally musical, he sang in the cathedral choir, but soon swapped Mozart for Elvis and rock ’n’ roll. By the time he was 18, his dark good looks and fancy footwork were turning heads at the Dumfries Drill Hall each week.
They included my mum, Catherine – or ‘Lady Catherine’, as he always called her – a beautiful blonde telephonist who, at 22, was four years his senior and a good deal more mature.
Love blossomed and they married in the cold snap of February 1963 – the snow was so deep he had to carry his bride to the wedding car.
We children came thick and fast. I was born that July, followed by Dermot in June 1965 and Corinne in 1969. Meanwhile, dad juggled working as a travelling salesman with singing in pubs and clubs. He was good, properly good. Decca Records offered him a contract – at about the time they took on Tom Jones – but he turned it down.
It would have meant leaving his wife and children to go to London and he just couldn’t do it. Imagine if he’d accepted!
But he wasn’t one for regrets and took a job as a postman, supplementing his income with a part-time career as MC and singer in various bands, including Montego (which played at my wedding) to help pay the bills.
His stage name was Danny Dee and he soon became ‘Danny the singing postie’, cheering everyone up, helping the elderly with their shopping, dishing out sweets and constantly breaking into song.
He was a walking party. Our house was often filled with family and friends, singing, drinking and regaling endless stories.
At any opportunity he’d whip out his guitar and teach us silly songs such as Stewball was a Racehorse, despite only knowing three chords. He loved to look good and loved a bargain. Ever the shrewd organiser, he even snapped up his own cemetery plot for the discount price of £45 before he turned 50.
Behind all the fun, he’d had his fair share of health scares. Not that he’d let that get him down, or temper his lust for life.
As a child he’d had rheumatic fever. In his mid-twenties when he was driving home from Brighton, he hit a post box, which was a bit ironic, and was in hospital for months with broken bones. He had to learn to walk again. There was also a nasty fall in a graveyard which left him with a fractured jaw and hearing loss in one ear.
And then, aged 59, ill health forced him to retire after a CT scan revealed he’d been suffering a brain malformation from birth which had caused him to become epileptic. But in typical Danny Dee style, instead of moping he threw himself into retirement. He and mum travelled the world and visited friends in Tasmania.
He watched his beloved Celtic, Grouse and lemonade in one hand, cigarette in the other. He adored his grandchildren and they adored him, particularly when he’d ask: ‘How does it feel to be as goodlooking as your grandad?’
Like us all, dad wasn’t perfect. He had a temper and could be irascible and impatient and more than a bit of a rascal.
But all his flaws were easily outshone by his kindness, generosity of spirit and sense of fairness. He was the best dad a girl could have and his epitaph summed him up – ‘I’ve had a good life. I did it my way.’