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Radio 5 Live,1 min

MP: 'My dad was an alcoholic - but I was lucky'

5 Live In Short

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Labour MP Jon Ashworth has spoken frankly and movingly about his childhood spent growing up with an alcoholic father. The Shadow Health Secretary is MP for Leicester South. He's calling for greater recognition of the damage done by excessive drinking. He told 5 live's Stephen Nolan how, as a young boy, he often wouldn't see his father on a Saturday as he would "stay in bed" - leaving Jon to fill time on his own: "Going Live was on the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ in the mornings with Gordon the Gopher, Philip Schofield and all that... I'd watch that, make myself breakfast, hang around, play outside in the garden... My dad would emerge out of bed [in the] early afternoon and then he'd get stuck back into the drink." Jon Ashworth described how alcohol dominated his childhood: "I knew nothing else. That was the life, that's what it was... It's only now as an adult that I begin to think about it more and understand it more." He says he wants to speak out to help those "hundreds of thousands of children" growing up with violent or abusive alcoholic parents. Jon Ashworth insists he counts himself lucky in some ways: "My dad was an alcoholic but he was never violent, he was never abusive. He was never a horrible drunk - but he just was drunk." This clip is originally from Stephen Nolan on Friday 03 February 2017.

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