How do you forgive your father’s murderer?

How do you forgive your father’s murderer?
Chris McGladeChris McGlade
Chris McGlade

Chris McGlade did so quickly and instinctively – and probably saved his own life, or at least his own happiness, in the process.

Cutting his teeth in the north-east’s working men’s clubs, self-proclaimed Smoggie and Middlesbrough native Chris is now taking his brand-new show Forgiveness on tour around the UK.

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Dates include The Old Market, Brighton on July 6 and Portsmouth’s Groundlings Theatre on July 7.

“This is my father’s legacy,” he says. “He was a funny, bighearted, inclusive, tolerant, forgiving man. Humour, passion, inclusivity, tolerance and forgiveness are things I feel the world could do with a little more of today.”

In 2011, a man was jailed for life after being convicted of murdering Chris’ dad, strangling him and then setting his body alight.

Chris, a stalwart of the comedy scene having been performing for 30 years, is in the remarkable position that he can say: “Dad’s murder more or less liberated me. It showed me what is important in life.

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“And I honestly believe that forgiveness was the most important part.

"I don't have any bitterness or anything like that inside of me. We all get angry but I rose above the anger that I found on the Sunday morning. We found out that dad had been burnt alive the day before and we suspected something was wrong and then on the Sunday the police confirmed that it had been murder.

“I broke down then but once I came right I started asking whether we should get him buried or cremated and I started to get a smile on my face. You usually scatter ashes somewhere someone has been happy and I said to the policeman ‘I don't think they would like that on the cheap meat counter in Aldi’ and I started to laugh. When I was laughing the police just could not believe it and my wife just said that's the way he is, she was making excuses for me. But as I was laughing I could hear my dad saying to me that that's how you deal with it and I could feel him very close to me. I just felt that I rose above the anger that had been consuming me since earlier that morning when we first got the call.

“Forgiveness is a really personal thing. Some people can do it and they can do it quickly. Some people have to ease their way into it and some people never get to do it.

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"But the lovely thing is that my show often shows other people the path to forgiveness after their suffering. People have got in touch having seen the show.

"Family members have committed suicide and they've never been able to forgive them for taking their own lives but after seeing the show they have found that forgiveness. But then other people in comparison have relatively small things happen to them, like an argument or whatever, and they just can't find forgiveness. Forgiveness is a process and, as I say, it is very very personal.”