Mom and Dad were great friends with Elizabeth Taylor and her husband Mike Todd. Mike died in a plane crash in 1958, when I was two, and my dad flew to Elizabeth's side, making his way slowly to her front.
He first dried her eyes with his handkerchief, then he consoled her with flowers, and he ultimately consoled her by sleeping with her.
This made marriage to my mother awkward, so he was gone within the week. If Mom and Dad were Jennifer and Brad, then Elizabeth Taylor was Angelina Jolie. I saw more of Dad on television than in real life.
He later wrote his autobiography, Been There, Done That - well, he called it an autobiography, but I thought of it more as a novel. I like to call it Been There, Done Them, because it really was just about the women he'd slept with and how the sex was and what their bodies were like (so it is a feelgood read).
But after I read it, I wanted to get my DNA fumigated.
Anyway, Dad's absence meant my younger brother Todd and I were brought up by our mother in our modern house, which I called 'the Embassy' because it looked less like a house than a place you would get your passport stamped.
It had things most normal houses didn't have, such as eight little pink refrigerators and three pools ... you know, in case two broke.