Alan Davies has shared a rare insight into how he met his wife Katie Maskell in a candid chat.
The actor-comedian, 59, has been married to the writer, 47, since 2007 after the pair met backstage at QI two years earlier.
Now, Alan has opened up about that meeting and ow he plucked up the courage to ask Katie out after spotting her in the audience.
Alan revealed that Katie was working for a literary agency because one of their clients was on the QI panel for filming that day – and he later asked for her number in the green room bar.
‘She didn’t have her glasses on and that worked in my favour,’ he joked.
Elsewhere in the chat, Alan opened up about his traumatic childhood after revealing he was abused by his father earlier this month.
Alan Davies has shared a rare insight into how he met his wife Katie Maskell in a candid chat on Thursday
The actor-comedian, 59, has been married to the writer, 47, since 2007 after the pair met backstage at QI two years earlier (Seen in 2010)
Speaking to The Times about the home he shares with Katie and their two children, daughter Eve and son Bobby, Alan revealed he wanted it to be a very different environment for his kids than his childhood home had been for him.
‘My father was abusive and my brother didn’t believe it when I brought it up in a raging tantrum aged 15, we don’t have any contact now,’ he said.
He went on to say that he eventually got clarity on what happened to him as a child, as he discussed how it impacted his relationship with Katie.
‘I think Katie would have sent me packing a few years ago [if he didn’t understand how his childhood impacted him as an insult], honestly, because I wasn’t easy to be with,’ he said.
Earlier this month, Alan revealed said his own brother ‘stopped speaking’ to him after he had his father arrested for abuse.
Discussing his traumatic childhood in an interview, the comedian admitted his family would have ‘preferred he didn’t say anything at all’ as he detailed his fractured relationship with his siblings.
Alan was sexually abused by his father between the ages of eight to 13, following the death of his mother from leukaemia when he was six years old.
During his rise to fame he found himself struggling with alcohol and anger as a result of his childhood, but it was only after a therapist helped him come to terms with what had happened that he went to the police eight years ago.
Alan revealed that Katie was working for a literary agency because one of their clients was on the QI panel for filming that day – and he later asked for her number in the green room bar (Seen in 2005)
He has since discussed the abuse and how his childhood led him down a troublesome path in his memoir, Just Ignore Him, which was released in 2020.
Alan told The Telegraph: ‘If the abuse occurred within a family, as it usually does, the instinct to withhold feels right, because families don’t usually support the victim.’
He continued: ‘My older brother stopped speaking to me after I had dad arrested. He stopped sending birthday cards to my kids. I still have some contact with my sister, I see her son.
‘They would have still preferred I didn’t say anything at all. But this is bigger than my family. You can’t not shine a light on it, just because you find it “a bit awkward.”‘
Alan finally reported his father, who is still alive, in 2017, but was told that he wouldn’t be able to stand trial as he was in his eighties, had dementia and was in a care home.
During an appearance on Lorraine in 2021, he told guest host Cat Deeley that ‘secrets and shame are terrible things to carry for a child’ while discussing his memoir Just Ignore Him, in which the abuse was detailed.
Alan admitted that he had taken a ‘long time’ to find a way to discuss the ‘difficult’ aspects of his childhood, telling Cat that he wasn’t able to share his story on stage in his stand-up comedy routines.
The Jonathan Creek star told how he’s had friends share their own experiences of childhood abuse after reading his words, with Alan feeling that this aspect was one of the most ‘important’ things to come from him penning the memoir.
He explained: ‘It took me a long time to kind of find a forum as it were to talk about the more difficult things in my childhood, I haven’t been able to do it in stand-up comedy, I’ve done it in this book.
‘Several people, people I know, one or two quite well known people, they’ve come to me and they’ve said “I’ve read your book and a similar thing happened to me” or “similar things happened to me” and then we’ve had a conversation about it as normal as talking about having a cup of tea.’
He continued: ‘I feel like that’s the most important thing to come from the book, what I hoped would come from the book was that other people would find someone to speak to. Because secrets and shame are terrible things to carry for a child.
‘But also, you start carrying them as a child and then you carry them your whole life and they taint everything you do. They taint your whole life experience, all your relationships, everything.’
When asked if writing the book helps in anyway, he responded: ‘It does because recurring thoughts and recurring memories are just there every day.
‘It took me a couple of years to write this and it felt like kind of extracting something and made something worthwhile, I did the best words that I could.’
Alan’s difficult childhood was made worse by the fact that that he had lost his mum to when he was just six years old, with the physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of his father following.
