My hero dad’s still game but it’s hard to watch damage this awful disease is doing to him
Comedian Sanjiv Kohli on the challenges his family face caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s and how Father’s Day will be marked by devotion and humour
HE WAS Sanjeev Kohli’s comedy inspiration for the cantankerous but hilariously funny Navid in Still Game.
The actor, who nicked his dad’s most famous phrases to bring the shopkeeper to life, says he remains his hero but now for different reasons.
As Sanjeev reveals today in a heartbreaking interview, his father, retired teacher Parduman, is battling Alzheimer’s disease.
The comedy star said: “For someone who could never sit still and loved travelling it’s hard to see him like this.
“I know he is 90 years old and has done a lot and seen a lot, but he is my dad and I don’t ever want to lose him.
“There are advantages to losing someone slowly, as you have time to mentally prepare yourself. Despite knowing there will be relief when their suffering is over, you are never be ready to let themthemgo.”go.”
The comedian said seeing his 6ft 2in proud dad get weaker is distressing but said the family are determined to remain positive and want to honour him for Father’s Day today.
He said: “Dad still recognises family but his mobility has gone so he is more or less housebound. We’ve had to move his bed downstairs and he has four wonderful NHS carers coming in every day to help my incredible mum look after him.
“Dad is still very much in there and that twinkle and his sarcasm are still very much alive.”
That wicked sense of humour and hilarious catchphrases are exactly what Sanjeev would use when playing Navid in the muchloved BBC comedy.
Sanjeev, 53 said: “I didn’t write Navid but I channel my dad’s spirit when I play him – if he wore a turban he would be my dad. He could be quite badtempered with us when we were kids. We found out later it was because he had taken on a lot of overtime to get more money for our education.
“My brothers and I would be playing footfootbalballl in our bedroom
and he would come through. He never raised his hand, all he had to do was say you ‘bloody b******s’ and we knew that the game was up.
“When Navid says ‘ b******s’ – I am totally channelling my dad.”
“I once took him along to a Still Game screening and I got him to stand up to take the applause.
“My dad is and always will be my hero. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago and has been going slowly downhill ever since. “He had a stroke eight years ago on the plane going to India and tests showed he had already had a series of mini-strokes. Looking back he had been getting forgetful.
“The stroke really aged him. When he was in his 70s he could pass for someone in their 50s. He suddenly looked his age. He got progressively more forgetful and had to stop driving. Since then it has been a steady decline.”
Sanjeev, who has two older brothers – Raj, 58, and Hardeep, 55 – told how Parduman and their mum, Kuldip, 81, came to London from India in 1966.
The River City star, who has a maths PhD from Glasgow
University, said: “Dad was from Firozpur in the Punjab in north India and my mum grew up in Kenya. They had an arranged marriage. They saw photos of each other and met for the first time on their wedding day.
“They made a great team although physically they were very different - dad is 6ft 2in and mum is 5ft 3in. I speculated it was because he picked her from a picture with nothing else in it for scale. Now if she had have been holding a Mars bar things might have been very different.
“They are both very funny and all three brothers get their comic timing from them. Back in the day Dad would reel off joke after joke. It was always great fun round the dinner table.”
The Kohli family moved to Scotland after Parduman, who had started a law degree in India, retrained as a teacher and got a job in St Mary’s in Bishopbriggs, where the family settled.
Sanjeev said: “Dad taught maths and modern studies in St Mary’s, which used to be a school for challenging boys, but they all really respected him. They loved his sarcasm.
“He had to go through two locked doors to get into his class. For every make of car there was a boy who could tell him how to break into it. They were hard work but my dad loved them and was good at his job.
“Mum worked as a
social worker in Glasgow in the mid- 70s but then bought a newsagents in Battlefield. She took over the running of that and because it was near our school we would help out after lessons.
“Our parents had no fear. If they decided to do something they just did it. At one point my dad decided to open a whole foods shop just around the corner from the newsagents just because he wanted to.
“I may have inherited their work ethic and their humour, but unlike them I am like a gate in the wind. I don’t plan, I fear change and I overthink things and find reasons not to do something.
“I only ever left Glasgow once for four months to go Interrailing, whereas they went right across the world to start this new life knowing no one.
“My dad was always like that. He loved travelling and was driving until two years ago. He loved cruises and going to Peru and Kashmir.
“His ambition was to do the transSiberian railway but we never got round to it and he isn’t fit to travel now.”
Parduman is one of 90,000 people in Scotland who have dementia, with well over half looked after at home by carers and family.
Sanjeev, who lives across the road from his parents in Glasgow’s west end, will be heading there for a Fa th e r ’ s Day celebration today.
He said: “We normally go out but Dad loves fish and chips but this year I think we will just order iin. Mum can be ppersuaded to eat takeoout on a special ooccasion. It will be lolovely to spend the day totogether as a family.
“Dad is my hero and mumum is my rock. I am so luclucky to have grown up witwith such wonderful pareparents.”
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