Ian Wright: Home Truths began with the ex-footballer saying that the home he grew up in was ‘not a happy one’. As truths go, though, this soon turned out to belong firmly in the category of ‘understated’. Not surprisingly, Wright’s favourite boyhood programme was Match of the Day — which is why his stepfather would make him stand with his face against the wall while it was on. (‘Just because he could,’ Wright explained.) He also beat Wright’s mother: often, Wright recalled, while she repeatedly cried the word ‘Sorry!’ One consequence of this abuse, he went on, was that she took it out on him — informing him on ‘a daily basis’ that she hated him and, slightly less regularly, that she wished she’d had him terminated.
These days Wright lives in a house full of such middle-class signifiers as wooden serving bowls for pasta and oversized glasses for wine. But, as he put it with the anguished matter-of-factness that characterised much of the programme, ‘I keep remembering things.’
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