He came to the States in 1963, I think with a view to making up with my mother, but that didn't work. He came for three weeks, and drank his way all over Brooklyn. And went back... I went to his funeral in Belfast.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I grew up with the one of the most famous fathers in the world in the 1960s and '70s. He passed away in 1984, and as time went on, people didn't know him. That blew me away.
In 1965, I was 11 and in my last year at Junior school. I was living with my mum and older sister in a rented flat in south London - my parents had separated when I was five and got divorced a couple of years later, which was unusual at the time. My dad was working abroad, and I hadn't seen him for several years.
He never admitted anything, even on his deathbed. He was a deluded liar. If it weren't for my father, I don't think I would be so open. So that's a huge blessing.
From the year of his birth in 1914 until the outbreak of war in 1941, my father lived in a mostly white, mostly working-class, mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
While he was in the service, in the South and in Oklahoma, he was refused service at a couple of places where he was in uniform, and was told that African Americans, blacks, Negros, were not served. And in spite of that, I've never known a man who loved this country more than my father did.
He was a manager, one of the singers, I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in, a lot of my buddies.
Despite my express wish, I was not left in Chicago, but taken to Paris to live, and I did not see my father for many years. But we never stopped loving each other, and in 1940 he died in my arms in Hollywood, where he had come to be near me at the end.
My father was never around. It was almost as if he didn't exist. I would tell my friends he was in Cleveland, on business. Sometimes, every six months or so, he would come by for dinner.
He vanished to the public in order to materialize for his family.
I had to go to Europe to tour and he died on the second day of the tour.