He was born in Derry in 1924, and he became a very well-known tenor. He was one of the artists who sang at RTE's opening ceremony, and his first TV series was called Home With O'Hagen. My brother Mick was always joking about it, because the set was a piano with a big chandelier over it, and we could never find that chandelier in our house anywhere.

My dad spent nine months of every year on tour, which was very hard on my mother Eileen, because she had to be both a mother and father to us. My memory of my father as a child was this larger-thanlife man who came home from tours and brought us presents. I loved little toy soldiers and comics, and he always brought me some home.

There are extreme parallels between our lives, because now I'm away on tour a lot myself. I see how strong a man and how good a father he was, and I can empathise with the insecurity he felt around the music industry, which I feel now myself.

Dad suffered with rheumatoid arthritis from the age of 28, and he couldn't really dress himself properly as a result. When I was 14, he asked me just before my Inter Cert if I was going to pass it, and when I told him I more than likely wouldn't, he asked me if I wanted to go with him instead on a three-month tour of New Zealand, working as his dresser.

I went with him, and spent a lot of time talking to him, and watching him on stage every night doing two-hour shows with a piano player in sold-out halls all over New Zealand. Nowadays, people just want to be famous, but I learned a thing called stagecraft from my dad, and how to treat an audience.

My dad had his audiences in the palm of his hand within seconds of walking out on stage. He made it all look so natural, and I took it for granted, as you do at that age.

On reflection now that I've done tours myself, I know the strain of being the lead vocalist, and being totally reliant on your vocal chords holding up for the duration of the tour.

I got to know him as a singer as well afterwards, because we did a few TV shows together, and I got to produce a couple of demos for him.

Dad was a very religious man, and charismatic, and I think that helped him to face an awful lot in his life. He had some very bad experiences, such as financial ones, and he wasn't the best businessman in the world.

I don't blame people for things they've done to me, but I'd make sure they don't do it again, whereas my father would just turn the other cheek, and let it happen again.

Dad had a great sense of humour and fun, and he'd always try to upstage me in some way. I remember doing a big show in Australia, and he was opening the show for me. I had the number one dressing room, and when I went into it, he was already there. He told me I could have it when he was finished with it!

On another occasion, we did the Braemor Rooms in Dublin, and my big song at the time was 'The Town I Loved So Well'. Josef Locke was in the audience one night, and dad invited him up to sing that song, knowing full well that I was coming on immediately afterwards, and it was my big number. I'd have steam coming out of my ears afterwards, and he'd just roar laughing at me.

He had terrible, terrible physical pain in his life from his arthritis, and was confined to a wheelchair at the end of his life. but he never complained. His gentleness was legendary, and my memories of him were always being in a good mood and always being there if you wanted to talk. He was very loving, and although he would never say it, as parents of that generation didn't, I knew from the way he behaved towards me. I knew he was proud of me as well, by the way he brought me out on stage to sing with him.

My two older sons, Adam and Fionn got to know him, but not my younger son Jack, who was born after he died. The grandchildren remember dad's sense of humour, and they used to have a lot of fun with him.

My father died in 1993 aged 69 in Australia, where he lived for the latter part of his life, and I came back after he died to do the guest spot at the Eurovision in Millstreet. I was struck by the genuine respect and affection he was held in by everyone he worked with, from RTE producers to the guys who worked on the sets.

Dad was always there for good advice, and he spoke to me as an adult in the years before he died . . . as men, as well as father and son. I really miss him still. He taught me to take the energy from bad things that happen and turn them into a positive energy. He might have been crippled from the point of view of being in a wheelchair, but he was a much bigger man than most of the men I've met in my life, and that's why he'll always be my hero.