The one that got away

His son still remembers Ivor Cutler taking him fake fishing as a boy, but it took the cult comic his whole life to become a real father, Jeremy tells Aidan Smith

ON THE journey to meet Ivor Cutler's son, I can't help thinking about a recent survey which made front-page news for declaring childhood to be officially over by the age of 11. Ivor, I reckon, would have hated that.

He was the great Scottish eccentric who continued to view the world from a child's perspective right up until his death at the age of 83. Admittedly, this was the kind of child whom grown-ups of a more stern era would have deemed odd enough to require corrective treatment, possibly involving electrical jolts. But the rest of us knew the truth: an adventure in his company was guaranteed to be original, ridiculous, macabre and frequently hilarious.

Depending when you first heard him on John Peel, radio nestled under the duvet, he was the uncle or great-uncle you never had: a spinner of surreal tales, the best of which recounted a spartan, smacked-arse-no-supper adolescence – Life In A Scotch Sitting Room. His friends included John Lennon and Bertrand Russell and his influence spread all the way back to Glasgow and Billy Connolly and Franz Ferdinand. But what was it like having Ivor Cutler as a dad? Jeremy Cutler lives in a small flat in Islington, North London. He works as a lock-keeper, the latest in a long line of jobs including librarian and printer. To that list must now be added family archivist.

The living-room is full of boxes spilling over with diaries, drawings and tour posters. In the corner sits a harmonium, wheezing accompaniment to Ivor's verse. And there's even more of this stuff in the study.

"We're trying to work out what to do with it all," says Jeremy, who has a younger brother, Daniel. "There are a lot of unreleased songs and poems on cassette and eight-reel. Some of the recordings are just conversations. Dad liked to keep a tape running most of the time. Do you think the fans would want to hear any of that?"

Well, it might give us an insight into life in the Cutler household. Was a boiled egg always just a boiled egg? Or did Ivor see gloomy comic possibility in everything?

"I couldn't say I was pleased when he felt the need to walk down the street with a carpet sample in place of a tie. Or wear brightly coloured socks – odd ones. And then there was his selection of hats…"

Daniel, a professor of microbiology, isn't here today, so on the second anniversary of Ivor's death, 55-year-old Jeremy must dredge up these memories by himself. He is tall, bald, bespectacled, with a grey beard, and the resemblance is strong. He has something of his father's lugubriousness, especially in the deadpan delivery of strange family anecdotes.

This is Ivor in his Scotch Sitting Room, describing a typical day of making fun however you could: "Crumbs on the carpet weren't wanted and we were obliged to kneel and eat cream crackers with our heads inside the sideboard. This was a treat because there was room for four and in the luminous gloom we whispered jokes."

And this is Jeremy, recalling the time he asked his father to take him fishing: "He said: 'I know, we'll play at fishing.' So he got a piece of string, tied a fork to one end, went into the street and dangled it in a puddle. But I knew there were no fish there."

There's a crucial difference here. Ivor's upbringing in 1930s Glasgow was harsh, but he exaggerated it for our amusement. Jeremy's angling expedition that wasn't is entirely true. "I wanted to go real fishing," he says. He also wanted to play real table-tennis but had to pretend with books for bats.

Jeremy thinks he was about eight at the time of this mad make-believe. Career-wise, Ivor had already notched up his radio debut on the old Home Service and appeared on the London stage in An Evening Of British Rubbish – a show which, according to Jeremy, "caught the tail-end of music-hall and presaged Python". The next few years would bring the patronage of the Beatles and a role in the film Magical Mystery Tour. But it was also around this time that Ivor split from his wife Virginia.

"The divorce was civil rather than amicable," says Jeremy. "Mum, who's still alive, wanted them to stay friends but Dad didn't. He wasn't exactly family-oriented. He didn't even go to the funerals of his own parents."

Cutler was born a goal-kick from Rangers' Ibrox Stadium, the son of Jewish parents whose family had, according to legend, pitched up in Scotland from Eastern Europe believing they were migrating to America. Anti-Semitism, barefoot poverty, 200 lashings of the belt – that was Cutler's Scotland, and he resolved to become a different kind of teacher, more inspirational. Leaving Scotland was, he said, "the beginning of my life". Presumably, then, his sons were raised in London free from Scottish influence? "Not quite," says Jeremy. "Dad made Daniel go to school in a kilt. The other kids surrounded him and chanted 'Girlie!'" Once again, a real-life incident chimes with the goings-on in that Scotch Sitting Room. On record, Ivor describes being made to stand on a table while the rest of the family peered up his kilt – a "vile and shameful punishment".

Ivor taught at his sons' school – that way he hoped to exert more influence on them than the average divorced dad – but the arrangement didn't always work. "His drama class was pretty unconventional. You had to play-act as a life-saving doctor or whatever. When I heard the other kids slagging him off, I wanted to defend him, but I didn't get what he was on about either."

Jeremy's frustrations with his father are all too apparent, and occasionally he describes them in therapy-speak. This was the "believer in free expression" who reprimanded his son for drawing with a ruler; the dad who was too much of a Dada-ist. Later he became "unsociable" and reluctant to receive visits from his sons.

But Jeremy came to appreciate Ivor's humour later. He listened with pride to the Peel sessions, all 21 of them. He became his roadie, lugging the harmonium everywhere. Now with Daniel he's keeping their father's legacy alive.

The brothers have set up Hoorgi House Records to release lost or newly discovered material, starting with A Flat Man, his long unavailable final album. The Peel sessions may soon make their way on to CD. Jeremy would like to see an exhibition of Ivor's artwork as well as a biography. And there's also talk in Glasgow of a plaque being erected at his tenement birthplace.

"In the last two years of Dad's life we became great friends," says Jeremy. Friends, and finally, father and son. Ivor suffered from dementia and Jeremy looked after him. "I had to trim his beard, cut his hair – stuff I never thought I'd do – and then find him the right care and a good home." And for the first time he got to tell the daft stories – convoluted nonsense about missing shoes. "He'd never let me buy a new pair otherwise – he didn't see the point."

Jeremy last visited him just before he suffered a massive stroke. "I was very, very lucky. I'd seen him the night before and I was pretty tired, but I went back in and he was in such a good mood. That lightness was so rare because most days he said he just wanted to die. As I was leaving the manager said 'See you tomorrow, Ivor' and Dad harrumphed: 'Not if I see you first.'"

It wasn't easy being Ivor Cutler's son but Jeremy found a way in the end. As I say goodbye, I spot a table-tennis bat amid the cheerful clutter – a real one. "I became quiet a good player, you know," he says, "and in my life I've also caught the odd fish."

• A Flat Man is released tomorrow, www.hoorgihouse.com