He was never into really dodgy stuff. He was just one of them blokes that could turn his hand to anything. There were loads of blokes like that on the estate. Fred the Veg — he’d always sort you out with fruit and veg. John the Screw — he was good at DIY. TV Terry fixed tellies. There was always somebody willing to do you a favour, help you out.That’s just how things were.

Take something as simple as shoes. My dad knew this fella who’d come round selling these cheap plastic things. They were like horrible old men’s shoes. I hated ’em. I’d do anything to ruin ’em. Let the dog chew ’em and everything. But my dad also knew this other bloke, Uncle Alf, who was a cobbler. Actually, I don’t think he really was my uncle. He used to sleep in a rubber dinghy at the back of his cobbler’s cabin. Every time I ruined a pair of shoes, Alf would repair ’em. And he wouldn’t just do normal repairs. He’d put, like, three soles on them, extra stitching and thicker laces. They’d be better than new.

Though I hated the shoes at the time, I suppose I understood what my dad was doing. He was making sure that at least we all had shoes, even if we didn’t have new ones. It was as if he was acting like some sort of barrier between us kids and the real world.

When I was about 11, my dad went into hospital. He’s a big bloke, my dad, and he was beginning to get out of breath all the time. I always say he went in for a bypass, but he gets annoyed at me for that, because it was just some sort of valve thing to help pump the blood through. Me and my mum went to see him at Wythenshawe hospital and it really shocked me. He was dead pale and he’d lost a lot of weight: it was like it wasn’t really my dad. Because my dad was always all right. He sorted things out for me. He didn’t get ill.

As a kid, you immediately start thinking all the selfish things, like who’ll fix my go-kart? And who’ll drive the car when we want to go shopping? I hated seeing him like that, and it must have been awful for him too — people sitting around him while he was lying in bed, not able to do anything for himself. I had no idea what to say to him — well, you don’t as a kid, do you? I remember there was this pair of old-fashioned headphones on his bed, and I just put them on to try and escape from the awkward atmosphere. I knew my dad wasn’t on top form and I almost felt like I didn’t want to be there.

Anyway, I’m listening to some music on the headphones and a bit later this lad comes round asking for requests.

I said to him: “What’s all this about, then?” And he says: “It’s hospital radio. Do you want to come and have a go?” Looking back now, I can’t believe it really was that easy. But I was 11 years old and I was having a go at broadcasting.

I loved it. It was fantastic.

My dad got better, but I used to carry on going down to do a bit of hospital radio. I think I probably knew there and then that I wanted to get into radio, but
I wasn’t a very confident kid, so I didn’t tell anybody. Not even my mum and dad. I was a bit embarrassed.

In my head, I’d got visions of this time when I’d played drums in the nativity play at school, and my mum and dad came to see me. Somebody had videotaped the play and when I watched it later on, I could hear my dad’s voice in the background going: “Look, that’s my son, the twat in the hat.” For some reason, I was wearing a pork-pie hat.

To this day, I still can’t remember why.

I didn’t even tell my mum and dad when I started the radio shows on Xfm with Ricky [Gervais] and Steve [Merchant]. It was a London show, so I assumed they wouldn’t hear it in Wales, where they live now. But then they went and got Sky and started listening to it. That really put me off for a few weeks. I almost wanted to pack it in.

My dad going into hospital wasn’t... well, it wasn’t a good thing, obviously. I’m not glad he was ill or anything like that. But I suppose that was what got me into radio. And, bizarrely, me and my dad did get on a lot better after he came out. I think it made him realise he had to do a bit more exercise. He used to go on these walks around the estate. And after a while he got a bike, and we used to go on bike rides together. Down past these fields near the chemical plant.

At the time, my dad never said much. But these days he often mentions them bike rides. I think he enjoyed ’em.

The book The World of Karl Pilkington, and a CD of the Ricky Gervais Show podcasts, are out now

Interview by Danny Scott
Portrait by Sam Holden