In my early 20s, over the course of two years, I lost my dad to glioblastoma, an aggressive kind of brain cancer. It would be an impossible task to convey here the mountain of emotions I felt during that time. I was essentially existing in purgatory, with every high or loving moment tinged with despair, and every low met with a solemn gratitude. There was also so much colour. I don’t think I have ever felt so much or remembered so clearly.

Seven years later, I thought I would try to give some sense of those feelings and memories that stuck out, sculpted in my mind, so I began writing them down. The result is a sort of memoir, which plots my journey and tries to show the power that humour and laughter held in some of my darkest moments.

For as long as I can remember, I had felt a deep-rooted terror. It was a feeling, almost like a premonition, that I would be one of those people whose dad would die when they were young. A single small thought that never went away.

I grew up with that feeling and it couldn’t help but affect my behaviour. I thought about it every day. I created a ‘risk of death’ hierarchy for different modes of transport he would be taking; trains being the lowest, planes the highest. I always picked up the phone and never flaked on a weekend together. I put strangers’ litter in bins as a trade to protect him. I saved texts on every phone I had and set reminders to resave voicemails he’d left. I took his photo. I panicked. I worried, endlessly. I kissed him. And I told him I loved him.

So when I got a call from my stepmother at 8.45am on Friday 29 July 2011, explaining that Dad was being transported to SevenHills Hospital, Mumbai, for emergency brain surgery, it was as if my feeling was forcing its way into fact. Dad had been working on the Indian version of the UK game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? and was now unconscious in some ambulance, speeding past tuk-tuks and screaming horns. After she’d hung up, I kept the receiver pressed against my ear, listening to the white noise. Dread seeped from my phone and skulked into my boyhood bedroom in Wandsworth, bringing with it a power that threatened to crush the particularly sensitive pocket of love and worry I’d been trying to protect.

In that moment, all sense of stability capsized. I couldn’t breathe. It felt as if my stomach was filling with acid and my knees, for some reason, bounced uncontrollably. I thought of Sophie, my 14-year-old sister, and how she’d react. I tried to stand but pins and needles had turned my legs to stumps.

Rodney Taylor, aged 60, had always worked in game shows. He spent prolonged periods in various parts of the UK, producing practically every one you’ll have heard of from the 1990s. Dale’s Supermarket Sweep, Bruce’s Price Is Right, Cilla’s Blind Date, Leslie’s Wheel of Fortune and Tarrant’s Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?.