Russell T Davies reveals the Welsh family story behind his star-studded success

Amelia Jones 

Russell T Davies has spoken about his difficult relationship with his father and his mother’s struggle to accept some of his television work.

The Swansea-born writer discussed his Welsh upbringing and the family life behind his career in a new episode of Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast.

Davies, whose work includes Doctor Who, Queer as Folk and It’s a Sin, recalled how his father Vivian’s wartime experiences had shaped him, while his mother’s enthusiasm for Doctor Who did not extend to his more controversial work.

The youngest of three children, he described his father as a difficult man to please.

In the interview, he said: “I remember he was tough, my father. He was a good man, but in many ways, we didn’t get on.

“When I left Doctor Who in 2010, he didn’t say this to me but said it to my sisters. Do you know what he said? ‘Yesterday’s man.’ He said. Thanks, Dad.

“It’s hardly abuse. I was 41 years old. You survive that kind of thing. But wow.”

He admitted he had wondered whether his father’s criticism had contributed to his relentless work ethic, but dismissed the idea as “cod psychology.”

He suggested that understanding his father’s wartime experiences had given him a different perspective on the man he had known as his father.

Vivian was just 16 when he went to war, Davies said. He had witnessed terrible deaths and did not begin speaking openly about those experiences until he was in his 70s or 80s.

He added: “He knew people who died swimming in burning oil. He knew people who fell out of planes just fell to earth. Terrible losses of his generation.”

“He only started speaking about that when he was 70 or 80. He lived to about 89 or 90. Every November the 11th, he’d stand up on the one minute silence, and remember them and give a little salute.”

“He genuinely remembered them. That’s hard.”

Difficult home life 

His father had also returned from the war to a difficult home life, with an alcoholic mother, and Davies described one episode from his father’s youth involving a woman he had fallen in love with while serving overseas.

Margaret Radcliffe travelled from London to Swansea after the war to see him. She arrived alone at the family home and told him she loved him, but Davies’ father thought it was impossible for a Welsh man to fall in love with a Cockney, and would not let her into the house.

For Davies, the story was characteristic of a generation which had learned not to talk about its experiences. He said: “This is all kind of stuff I gleaned after my mother died.

“He told me the Margaret Radcliffe story once. It’s just that generation who just didn’t talk about things at all.”

Day suggested that his father’s experiences might have contributed to Davies becoming a storyteller.

Davies said he had never previously considered the connection, but acknowledged that his father was an accomplished storyteller.

He was a renowned after-dinner speaker and, according to his son, could have an audience in fits of laughter.

Davies said: “I always remember him rehearsing the speeches, and once or twice I saw it, and he was hilarious. He had rooms in raptures of laughter.

“But it was never like that at home, really. It’s fascinating. Lots of contradictions in him.”

Importance of Doctor Who

Davies’s mother, Barbara, was another important influence. She loved TV, and he has previously described growing up in a household that “never switched the TV off” until after closedown.

Talking about those early memories, Davies said: “I wish my mum had seen Doctor Who cause she loved Doctor Who. She made me sit and watch Doctor Who with her. I wish she’d seen what I wrote, but she died in 2001.”

She did, however, see Queer as Folk, Davies’s groundbreaking drama about the lives of gay men in Manchester, but she did not exactly approve.

Davies recalled taking the programme home for Christmas before it was broadcast and showing it to his mother on VHS.

He said: “She thought it was soft porn.”

There was another uncomfortable moment the following spring, when his mother celebrated her 70th birthday with a party at Swansea Rugby Club.

Davies said some people who might otherwise have attended stayed away because he was going to be there. Queer as Folk had already been broadcast, and some people were apparently uncomfortable with him because of it.

He added: “She didn’t tell me that. Other people told me that.”

His work

Looking back at the themes running through his work, he said he had become aware while writing his memoir that ideas could remain dormant in his mind for decades before eventually emerging in his work.

He recalled a saying that had stayed with him: “You will have every idea you will ever have before the age of 16, and you spend the rest of your life coming to terms with that.”

Davies said that idea made sense when he looked at his own career.

He said: “If you look at my stuff, it breaks down into Doctor Who and gay. Really, that’s all I’ve done.

“That was all there before I was 16. That was there ticking away. All I’ve done is write different versions of that ever since.”

Those themes have taken him from Doctor Who and Queer as Folk to It’s a Sin, his drama about the AIDS crisis.

Davies was 18 in 1981, when HIV first appeared in Britain, and said he had lived through the crisis and seen the devastation it caused among his generation.

“The thing about It’s a Sin was that when the AIDS crisis came along, I fit that age.

“…I was leaving home in 1981 when that virus first appeared in Britain. I’ve lived through that crisis, and I’ve lived through the PrEP and the invention of medication, and the astonishing world we have now, where you can just take a pill a day and be completely fine.

“We’re untransmittable. Undetectable means untransmittable. I mean, what a story.”

He described the development of HIV treatment as “one of the greatest successes in medical history” and said the story had also influenced scientific advances during the Covid pandemic.

He added: “So it’s a tragic story but it’s not only a tragic story.

“That’s what I love about it.”

You can listen to the full interview here. 

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.