My flatmate greeted me with an unusually severe expression. It was 10pm after another long day at work and I slumped in the armchair. "You'd better check the answermachine," he said. I walked over and pressed the red button. A message from a relative in Manchester. My 65-year-old father was dead.

Several gulps of whisky later, I plucked up the courage to ring home. A familiar voice said: "Are you all right? You don't half sound queer." It was my father - still very much in this world. What was going on? Sensing an almighty mess brewing, I quickly finished the call and replayed the message. It was from a man calling himself "uncle" whose first name I didn't recognise. He had left a number and when the blunt Mancunian tone answered "Ronnie Craddock", the surname sent my mind spinning back to 1979.

I was 19 and had found a summer job at Schreiber Furniture on the Trafford Park industrial estate as a welder's mate. The welder was a divorcee in his late 30s called Bob Craddock, a swarthy, no-nonsense type who instantly took a shine to me. In my nervous late-adolescence, I was coming to terms with same-sex attraction. So, it seems, was Bob.

I found his confident, decisive nature attractive and we began a tempestuous affair, much of which found expression in the darker recesses of the factory building.

One afternoon, after several weeks in the job, we had our first row. I flung off the overalls. "Stuff your job and stuff you - I'm off," I shouted, fleeing the factory gates. I hopped on to a passing bus, but five minutes later, a woman sitting next to me prodded me in the ribs. "There's a man behind you in a car," she said, "and I think he wants your attention."

A metallic blue Ford Cortina had pulled up alongside us, blocking the oncoming traffic. The bus passengers craned their necks as the car driver leant across and wound down the window. Without the slightest self-consciousness out came the love that on this occasion dared speak its name: "I need you. I bloody worship you. Don't let it end like this. Please. I'll give you a pay raise. Just get off the fuckin' bus!"

It didn't take long for the bus passengers to realise to whom this volley of passion was directed. They began barracking and stamping their feet. "Bum chums," shouted one. I jumped straight off the bus and into the Cortina.

A smiling Bob slipped the car into gear and we sped off. "Well that worked, dinnit?"

"You stupid bastard," I responded. "Everyone on that bus works at the factory. What are we gonna do tomorrow?" His face tensed up. "I'll think of summat."

And sure enough he did. Heart pounding, the following morning I limped through the factory gates at 7.45am. A crowd of workers made up of the previous day's passengers were waiting for me.

"We're so sorry for yesterday," said the unelected spokesman of the crowd. "We knew he had a son, but we didn't know it was you. All that 'I love you' commotion. We thought you were a couple of ... well, you know." They slapped me on the back as Bob looked on with a smug grin. I asked him to explain what precisely was going on. "My son was only two years old when the wife and I split up. I've never seen him since, nor do I really want to, if the truth be known. His name was Mark."

This lie came back to haunt me 10 years later when Bob died in a chip-pan fire in his small flat in Hulme, Manchester. Still in the closet to his relatives, Bob had told them too that I was his long-lost son.

I went to visit his brother Ronnie, the man who had told me about Bob's death. After 10 minutes with him and his wife, Sheila, I could see they had no idea who I really was. In the middle of the lounge were two cardboard boxes full of photos of Ronnie and me on a holiday in Vienna from 1981, newspaper articles I had written and tapes of programmes I had made during my career as a journalist. Our relationship had lasted, on and off, for two years, but Bob had been obsessively tracking my life for more than a decade.

"You took your mum's maiden name, that's right, isn't it?" said Sheila, trustingly. I took a long gulp and explained that I was merely a "good friend" who Bob had become very close to. Long incredulous stares. Where, then, was the real son, they asked. I shrugged. "Look, we don't want him coming to the funeral," said Ronnie. "The photos are all of you and Bob. All the aunties have them. They all want to meet you." Then, after a long pause, "You see, I don't want them thinking my brother is a liar. Best if you come, eh? The funeral is Friday."

I was being asked to go and bury my ex-lover, because his family believed that I was his grieving son.

News of Bob's death circulated around his old workplace and dozens of macho welders saw the chance for a day off. On the other side of Bob's universe, several camp queens from Manchester's gay scene wanted to give "Bacardi Bob" a glorious send-off. Then, the night before the funeral, came the coup de grace. I was staying with my parents and my father asked what had brought me to Manchester. "It's a bit sad really," I muttered. "Funeral."

"Who's dead?" he asked. "You won't remember him," I said quickly. "Just a guy I worked with before university." I recalled they had briefly shaken hands once after I got a lift home. Then came the sentence which will be etched in my memory for ever. "Well I'm doing nothing tomorrow. I'll come with you. For a bit of company."

I don't know how I didn't choke to death. The more I tried to dissuade him, the more I was in danger of letting the truth out. My father knew I was gay and was not particularly thrilled, but it's one thing to talk of generalised attraction and another to come clean about carrying on with a man old enough to be my father.

How I got through the next day without calamity is a near miracle. I appointed my younger brother as a minder, to chaperone Dad and stop him from talking to the relatives. In the chapel we were shown to our seats by "Uncle" Ronnie. "Who's he? And what's he doing here?" whispered Ronnie, looking towards my father. When I explained, Ronnie grunted with understatement, "Could be a bit awkward." I looked at the crowded pews where drag queens were eyeing up men in overalls and making gestures. I prayed.

Very hard.

Bob's fragmented world sang farewell to him to the strains of Lord Of All Hopefulness, and my brother played a blinder, keeping Dad largely separate from the Craddock clan. The only major danger came when I was standing next to my father and up came a couple of doting aunties. "Oh, you do have your Dad's eyes," one of them said. Dad smiled and stepped forward. "Well, thank you very much," he said. The aunts looked puzzled, but before disaster unfolded, in stepped my brother and took him for yet another pint. And so it went on for two hours at the funeral reception. We ducked and weaved. And

survived intact.

Several years later, I started to work this farce into a film script. I'd come out more to Dad, who had met several of my partners, so in a moment of risky madness I sent him off a copy. A few days after I had posted it, I spoke to my mother on the phone. "We've read your story," she said. "But your Dad, he still doesn't get it. I do. It's pure Alan Bennett." My father died in 2005. He went to his grave still unaware of our incredible "near miss".

• Some names have been changed.

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