Paul Saunders Brown (1947-2015). Man of many job titles. Layer of woodblock flooring, plumber’s mate, soldier, lorry driver, car leasing agent, medical rep, man on the dole, car salesman, man back on the dole, security guard, retiree.

1. As a youth he was an altar boy, though not for long. His taste for the sacramental wine brought his time in a cassock to an early end.

2. After joining the army in ’68 he had a tattoo done while in Germany, but back home on leave didn’t want my Nan to see it so wrapped a bandage round his arm and told her it was some injury suffered on manoeuvres. All was going well until he forgot to put the bandage back on after having a bath.

3. At some point, about 1970, he got fed up with the army and went AWOL, somehow getting a plane back to Manchester without his passport. He hid in the airport toilets until the coast was clear, but was eventually tracked down by the MP to my Nan’s house.


4. An 80s New Years Eve night in Salford and my Irish gran is insisting all the family stand outside in the cold ready for the stroke of midnight with a glass of some spirit she forbids them to drink before 12. My dad being my dad, every time she turned her back he’d neck his then stand there cheeks aglow with an empty glass while she gave him a refill and an evil look. This scene would be replayed many times over.


5. In the mid to late 90s, he was working as a security guard at Salford Uni and one day United player Teddy Sheringham turned up for an event and was in need of a place to park. My dad told him the car park was full then promptly gave my mates a spot he had reserved for them.

6. Still with Salford Uni, he got talking to a lady who worked there who said she recognised him. It turned out they both lived in Swinton and on the same street. While swapping local gossip the lady said, “have you seen that house with the bad windows and the big hole in the roof?”
“Yes,” my dad said. “I know the one you mean. It’s ours.”
The lady was mortified but my dad found this hilarious.

7. More Salford Uni security years and this article about local gangsters threatening campus patrol officers. I like how they quote a guard who “did not wish to be named” while then clearly printing my old man’s name and picture. Exemplary journalism.


8. He’s retired and hasn’t left the mainland Britain since the 80s and wants to go to Europe on a jaunt and I go with him. We drive down to the Channel Tunnel, then through northern France, enter Belgium and get to Brussels with no problems. At which point, the sat nav cuts out and we’re hopelessly lost. Cars and tram lines are everywhere, and my dad is getting pretty frantic. That my phone has no signal doesn’t help and we end up driving around the Brussels ring road looking for a sign mentioning the area we’re staying in, but with no luck. Eventually we stop in a lay by and try to work out where we are. There’s a brick building just off to the side. Others vehicles are parked up, but not a soul is in sight. I get out of our car to change my shirt. It’s a hot day and I’m sweating. While I do this a figure emerges from the brick building. My dad squints to look at him then turns to me, standing there topless and tattooed and glistening on the hard shoulder under a Low-Countries sun, to ask, “Is that fella wearing eye liner?”*

*Likely a Phoenix Nights reference.


9. The time when bored he allowed a cold caller to talk him through how his computer had a virus and only they could stop it. For a good 20 minutes my dad indulged and frustrated them in equal measure with his lack of technical skills, before eventually admitting he did not in fact own a computer.

10. The last one. My dad drank in the same Salford pub for years, the Dog and Partridge on the Height – don’t look for it, it’s now a doctor’s surgery; make of that what you will. Anyway, one evening I get home from work and he’s not back yet. It’s almost 11 at night. Usually, he’d finish his shift at the Uni and head to the Dog for a pint and a chat rather than come home to an empty house. Time passes and he still isn’t back. This was in the days before he had a mobile so I couldn’t call him. At some point later on, I hear his key in the door and in he walks, looking a bit ruffled. He sits down and tells me he’s been at the police station as a brief guest of Her Majesty. Earlier on, he’d been in the Dog and got into an argument. Somebody said something he didn’t like. Something about my mum. She’d been dead about ten years by this point so quite how or why it all got started I don’t know but the upshot was my dad, aged in his mid-fifties is getting into a fight to defend the woman he loved, who he lost far too early and who he never really sought a replacement for.
And that was my dad.