I am the eldest child of a large family, born to parents who met through their religion, and followed to the letter the traditional family values of the day.

This meant my mother, an Oxbridge level student with a professional career, sacrificing this because the man of the household was deemed to be the breadwinner in a family.

My father, a skilled tradesman in an outdated and no longer wanted profession, earned so little that we lived as poor as church mice.

My parents were of the opinion that in all things, God would provide. To an extent this was true, on several occasions the whole family were invited to dinner, quite an invitation for such a large family.

On one such occasion, I had no shoes or trousers having worn holes in both, after dinner the host said as we were leaving, there are some bags of clothes in the hall our kids have grown out of, please take them. The bags contained several pairs of shoes, two of which fitted me along with trousers, socks, shirts etc. some of which were a bit large but at least I could go to school the following day.

My parents attended church on Sunday, prayer meetings mid-week and counted many Christians among their friends.

They tithed their income giving a percentage of everything they earned to the Christian organisations they supported, which must have been hard to do when they had no food in the house and no clothes for their children.

The house we lived in was a Victorian four-bedroom terrace in a poor area of the city, it was heated by coal fires, there were two attic rooms which were not insulated; hence they were overwhelmingly hot in summer and utterly freezing in winter, they provided a room for all the boys, and another room for the girls. Another bedroom was taken for my parents and the largest bedroom at the front of the house was let to students who paid rent.

Growing up, we were isolated from many of the commonplace things families now expect, we had no radio or TV, no car and never had a meal out in a restaurant. A real treat would be to have fish and chips in newspaper once or sometimes twice a year.

What we did have though was religion, in my opinion too much religion. The constant presence was palpable in the home, blaspheming was utterly forbidden, bible readings were most days, prayers before bed were the norm, grace was always said before eating and even our holidays were planned around religious events.

I was brought up to believe that God would punish anyone committing acts of homosexuality, and taught bible stories such as Sodom and Gomorrah where the towns were destroyed.

When I met with Jimmy Savile, and was introduced to sex, it was impossible for me to come forward under the circumstances, hence the delay until 2012 to report his abuse. Quality crimplene trousers, two nylon shirts and a blazer which looked like it had been fashioned from cardboard.