I devised My Old Man to pose a simple question: if you were asked to write about your father, what would you say? There was no other brief for the project, and no typical answer. Contributions for both the blog and the book that followed have varied drastically between sweet and sour, fond and tragically fraught, but the one unifying factor is that everyone – be they a writer, a teacher or a pop star – has a unique story to share about their father. And every tale is heartfelt. Nobody lies about their dad.

Ted Kessler

‘Take away the books, records and TV shows and what did we talk about? Not enough’

Dorian Lynskey on Dave Lynskey

A while ago, I interviewed the singer Robert Wyatt and came away thinking Dave (my choice; never “Dad”) would have loved him. Wyatt is from the same generation as my dad and similar in some indefinable way, although Dave was neither a musical genius nor a committed communist. Wyatt even smiled in recognition when I told him my name came from Dorian Hawkmoon, a character in Michael Moorcock’s 60s fantasy novels. (My mum had to put her foot down when Dave wanted my middle name to be Hawkmoon.)

I get this sensation a lot – this feeling that Dave is a phantom limb – and most keenly when I encounter art or artists. The comic-book exhibition at the British Library. The Guardians of the Galaxy. The vinyl revival. The Black Keys. So many times I wish he was there with me; so many things I know he would have enjoyed.

Dorian Lynskey and his father, Dave.

When I was young, my mum used to ask him, with increasing regularity and intensity: “Why do you need all this stuff?” He was a pathological collector, bad with money and loath to throw anything away, so my mum’s house remains cluttered with dozens of boxes of books, comics, records and plastic models that she doesn’t know what to do with. To her, they are just baggage, but to him each one was an expression of creativity. Dave wasn’t just a hoarder, he was a voracious enthusiast. Whenever I whined that I was bored, Dave used to say: “Only boring people are bored,” because the world is so full of interesting things.

Dave was born in Brixton, south London, in 1946, a quintessential baby boomer. His family moved to Norfolk, and he later regretted choosing to study at the University of East Anglia instead of moving away. Under pressure from his possessive mother to stay at home, he missed out on the liberations of campus life. He met my mum at teacher-training college in 1969 and took a series of teaching jobs, ending up at a school in the suburbs of south-east London, where I became “Mr Lynskey’s son”.

I get the impression that he didn’t pull his weight when I was very small. Perhaps he struggled to connect with very small children and their endless quotidian needs and was waiting until I was old enough to share his obsessions – easier for me than for my sister. We started with model aeroplanes, spending hours together in the shed at the bottom of the garden. Later came Star Trek, unnecessarily long war movies, the ghost stories of MR James and Dave’s copies of Mad magazine from the 60s, full of inscrutable in-jokes and bizarrely amusing parodies of films I had never heard of.

When I was 11, Dave came back from visiting his dying father in hospital with a gift of Uncanny X-Men #203 (“Phoenix Versus the Beyonder!”). This initiated an intense phase of father–son collecting, the two of us driving off to comic-book fairs in central London and the cluttered spare rooms of overweight men wielding photocopied catalogues dense with almost unreadably small type, returning with armfuls of new acquisitions in protective Mylar bags. You can imagine my mum’s delight.

When, for me, music eclipsed comic books, Dave was even more delighted. As a student, he had hung out at blues clubs and seen Pink Floyd headline at UEA. As a teacher in the 70s, he was legally obliged to like prog rock. He owned a harmonica that he had bought in a club from Rod Stewart, only to find out minutes later that it had actually belonged to a furious Long John Baldry. Baldry gallantly let my dad keep the harmonica and stormed off to find thieving Rod. This anecdote may have been the first time I heard the word “cunt”.

When Dave died, I realised that his record collection contained all the canonical classics, but that he never played them to me, because he was more excited about new bands that we could discover together: Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, the Jesus and Mary Chain. He once turned up in his Ford Sierra after midnight to collect me and my friends from the Venue in New Cross without complaint. He just wanted to know if the band had been good.

At school, I was known for having a “cool” dad, a rare creature in the south London suburbs during the 80s. The usual problem with becoming a teacher’s son is that the other kids don’t like your dad, but, to be frank, Dave was more popular than I was. I think he had a rare genius for teaching: an unusual ability to treat children as equals without becoming a soft touch. He asked his pupils to write short stories based on the first page of an HP Lovecraft yarn and allowed dyslexic students to speak theirs into a Dictaphone before that was common practice. He used the school’s first video camera to shoot a short film, which he edited to the sound of Holst’s The Planets, and brought the hefty device home during the holidays so that I could make primitive stop-motion movies with my Star Wars figures. He loved to dance. He was the funniest person I knew.

He could also be surly, impatient and remote, spending his evenings painting model planes in the loft or plugged into his headphones at the far end of the living room. He could be bizarrely combative about things he wasn’t that fussed about, guided by the principle that he needed to teach me how to argue. Given that he clashed with my mum on a daily basis, I already had a pretty good idea how arguments worked. I once had a blazing row with him about his voting Conservative in the 1992 election. After he died, my mum told me that he had, in fact, voted Green. I still can’t work that one out.

I’m certain now that he suffered from depression. He was lonely, because his university friends lived elsewhere and none of his colleagues or neighbours shared his interests. He seemed to find most people his own age disappointing, with their prosaic talk of jobs and schools and houses. My generation gave itself permission to stay young for longer, whereas he was considered eccentric for caring about new music past the age of 30. Perhaps he was born too early.

Brought up in a post-war household, where emotions were as dangerous as unexploded bombs – best avoided – he was constitutionally incapable of discussing his fears and insecurities, so that was where all that stuff came in. As long as we were talking about Batman or Quantum Leap or Stephen King, we were fine, and I was OK with that – probably too OK. There are too many gaps in my understanding of Dave, too many things I don’t know, because I never thought to find out.

The year after I left university, Dave fell ill. He had been diabetic since his teens, which often made him crabby. Now, everything was going wrong at once. In quick succession, he had a heart bypass operation, a stroke, a diabetic blackout that caused him to crash the car and kidney failure that required a dialysis machine. That was the blow that finally forced him to retire at 52. I wasn’t there. I had moved to London to start my career. I had fallen in love. I was busy doing important things such as clubbing. I was your common-or-garden self-absorbed twentysomething. I thought he would get better, mainly because I was too scared to consider the alternative. He wasn’t old and I wasn’t ready. He couldn’t die yet. But he did.

What I remember from his final year is the stuff. The Black Sabbath CD I asked Ozzy Osbourne to autograph for him. Our last conversation at the hospital, when I made him laugh by describing an Armstrong and Miller sketch about an inspirational teacher who stops caring the second the bell rings. His all-too-revealing obsession with Spiritualized’s devastatingly sad Broken Heart, which I chose for his funeral in 2000, alongside his own choices, Spirit in the Sky and A Whiter Shade of Pale. Take away the books, the records, the TV shows, the movies and what did we talk about? What did I know about him? Not enough.

Why did Dave need all that stuff? Because it was how he communicated best. And, in lieu of all the conversations we should have had, it’s how I communicate with him still. Dave’s passions were so numerous and varied that there are as many things that remind me of him as there are stars in the sky.

Dorian Lynskey is a music writer for the Guardian and Observer

‘He was as near to a sexy communist saint as ever walked this earth’

Julie Burchill on Bill Burchill

“Daddy’s girl”. It’s such a horrible phrase, conjuring up so much a female can be, which is everything a hardcore feminist like me despises. Some overgrown “princess” “practising” her “female wiles” on some doting, old dullard; in every way relatives can be revolting, this pair are.

My father – Bill Burchill, of Bristol – and I, on the other hand, fought like cat and dog from the moment my teenage hormones kicked in. Or, rather, I fought fate like a cat in a bag on its way to a drowning, while my dad raised an eyebrow and took out the dog du jour for a walk whenever I started kicking off. I was, from an early age, convinced there was a plot to keep me away from my beloved London and condemn me to life in my slow-moving, easy-going hometown. I reacted to my redneck, blue-collar roots with vicious indignation – as one who was fighting for her very life, which, in a way, I was. The life I wanted, full of hard liquor and easy pickings, as opposed to the fancifully named “life” that had been prescribed for me as a working-class girl in the provincial England of the 70s.

My father was a highly intelligent and extremely handsome man from a very poor family who, despite his God-given gifts, accepted his role in life not just with stoicism, but with his own, unique brand of modest arrogance: “I’m BILL BURCHILL – what more do I need!” (He never said that, but you could tell he thought it.) He repeatedly refused promotion in the distillery where he worked, believing it to be an overseer’s ruse to curtail his beloved trade-union activity, but he was a born leader of men, and he relished the fact. My favourite photo of him is not a family one, but a snap of him at some sort of work function: he is dressed smartly and has his shiny-shoed feet up on what is obviously a bigwig’s desk. He smiles serenely at the camera, while around him his mates, clutching pints, goggle and grin at his cheek, thrilled at his audacity.

‘A working-class girl in the provincial England of the 70s’ – Julie Burchill. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

If the class system had not had this nation in a stranglehold since the dawn of time, the ascent of millions of men like my father could have made this country a good deal greater than it was, and certainly far better than the sad shell of a nation it is now. But staying put suited my old man. He saw the beauty in everything, especially his adored hometown of Bristol. I saw only a backwater that threatened to pull me under and kill me. So, we were not, to say the least, similar – but I worshipped him nevertheless. I was a daddy’s girl – that was my dark, shameful secret. It was the love that dared not speak its name, lest I decided all I wanted from life was A Man Just Like Him and then became trapped, a prisoner of a pushchair before I could vote.

My father worked long, hard hours in the distillery, often on the night shift. My mother loved to sing – she was basically Mariah Carey behind a bacon slicer, with the good looks and temperament of the notorious diva, but minus the voice. When it was time for my dad to be getting up, she would start in with popular songs featuring his name. Even at the age of 13, when I was immersing myself in the glorious filth of Bowie at his bending, blowing, buggering best, I would find myself singing pertinent phrases from the songs as I skulked around my bedroom dreaming of escape. “I love him ... because he’s wonderful/Because he’s just my Bill ...”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I would whine. “You’re married, already!” Scrambling up the stairs, seeking sleazy sanctuary in the Velvet Underground, sickened by this flagrant display of marital pashing, I would be greeted by my father’s other greatest fan: Prince, an alsatian, who saw it as his vocation in life to generally growl at, often snarl at and occasionally take a chunk out of anyone who dared approach my sleeping dad.

Mind you, you couldn’t blame him. When they cast Sean Bean to play my old man in a BBC film I wrote about him and his dog, it was surely the first time that an actor (dreamy as Bean was) played a character more physically attractive than himself. But my dad treated the many women who fancied him (and even I, through my appalled hot-parent-hating eyes, could tell who they were) the way he treated the bosses who sought to promote him – with a sort of sarcastic incomprehension. He was only ever interested in my mother, and only ever fancied two famous women, so far as I know: the tennis player Billie Jean King and the actress Billie Whitelaw. My mother, in a moment of almost Wildean wit, once remarked to me, as she was savagely ironing: “Iss funny with yer dad, innit? People always says how modest ’ee is – but even the women ’ee fancies is called Bill!”

He was a factory worker, a car-park attendant and a man as near to resembling a sexy communist saint as surely ever walked this earth. There wasn’t a bad bone in that man’s body, but I recall that he was as baffled by homosexuality as most men of his era. Whenever Lionel Blair or, indeed, any penis-owning prancer appeared on the TV screen, he would stare in sheer incomprehension for a moment, shake his head more in sorrow than in anger, call out: “Prince/Patch/Benito!” (my father despised fascism even more than he despised cats, but thought it would have been cruel and confusing to change our tail-wagging Il Duce’s given name) and promptly leave the house with a creature you could rely upon not to plaster on the Pan Stik and do the fandango.

Which makes it all the more strange and beautiful that, when I was 10 years old, I came home from school one day and my father looked me straight in the face and said sternly: “Bolshoi.”

I eyed him warily. Of course, I knew what the Bolshoi was – I was a ballerina, tutored three evenings a week, a likely candidate for the Royal Ballet School. Had been since I was six and would be until my magnificent tits and towering height put me out of the running at the age of 12. “Bolshoi ... ballet?’ I ventured.

My dad sighed heavily and attached the lead to the dog’s collar. “No, Bolshoi ruddy Bristol Rovers!”

I stared at him, stunned, as he and the dog walked away. “We’re going to the ... Hippodrome? Next week? To see the Bolshoi?”

He looked back over his shoulder and winked at me. “Box. Arm and a leg! Don’t tell yer mother.”

As I recall, he read the Morning Star, then the Pink ’Un, then took out a pack of cards and played solitaire as I sat beside him that night in the lushest box the Bristol Hippodrome had to offer, enraptured by the greatest Russian dancers of the second half of the 20th century. When we got home, my mum was freaking. “Bill, thee can’t even see Lionel Blair on the telly for five minutes without taking the dog out! ’Ow did you manage to get through three hours of blokes with their bits out?”

He winked at me, kissed her on the cheek, put the dog’s lead on and opened the door. “Didn’t look, did I!” We heard his laughter as he walked into his street.

My father died of mesothelioma at the age of 70. Apparently, he had caught it by working with asbestos as a teenager, building the early NHS hospitals – typical stoic show-off, he couldn’t help himself from breaking the glad tidings to my mother and myself three years before he passed over thus: “Doctor says I’s a medical miracle. Iss been in there since I was 16! ’Ee said ’ee never seen nothin’ like it – a body that tough.” Then he took the dog out as my mother and I uncharacteristically clung to each other, wailing. Nevertheless, I heard him laugh and speak to the dog sarcastically as they went into his street once more: “Women!”

I moan a lot about nepotism but, as I write this, I realise that I, more than any of the half-witted, well-connected female columnists I bang on about, have benefited from it beyond all others. Because I was the only child of Bill Burchill, of Bristol. I was my father’s daughter.

Julie Burchill is a journalist and author

‘He never laughed much, but when he did the whole of the Black Country laughed with him’

Tjinder Singh on his dad

‘We had a very decent upbringing in Enoch Powell’s Wolverhampton’ – Tjinder Singh (second left).

My father was in many ways there, but not there at all. Not that he was a rogue, like a lot of men I can remember growing up, but, like Peter Sellers in The Party, he would be quietly in the background, trying to keep away from trouble when he was outside the house, and, like Enid Blyton’s Uncle Quentin, he secluded himself when he was at home.

We had a very decent upbringing in Enoch Powell’s Wolverhampton. My father, the youngest man at that time to make it to the grade of headmaster in the Punjab, decided to go to England and bat for the India first XI. Metaphorically, that is. As he was a man of learning and few words, it was really when he passed away and left the crease that I started thinking more of him, and of him more. Like most people who have had a child or two, or gone through a few perilous times – or 20 – these thoughts started to cement over time.

Massaged into his conversation were all of life’s stories retold in no particular order, and it’s that lack of order that makes it that much more compelling to hear again and again, until even the most unattentive bastard commits. Very similar to listening to the best music albums, you complete dimwit.

He never swore. He was never dishonest. He never laughed much, but when he did the whole of the Black Country laughed with him.

As his teacher re-training never quite got him back to the standard he had achieved in India, he lived a life in the shadow of what it should have been, and was rather disappointed with his lot as the overs passed away. Yet, in his kids’ eyes, in which he was too consumed to find any solace, he was the only wog in the world.

There were a few summers when he would come and watch us play cricket, or, more precisely, inspect a clump of mound to see what makes it mound. Nowadays, I join him there sometimes, just shy of the boundary, walking with our arms behind our backs and holes in our conversation. I hope that ball is not coming our way.

Tjinder Singh is the singer, songwriter and producer of the band Cornershop

‘He doesn’t like to move much, having been a touring man his whole life’

Adam Cohen on Leonard Cohen

I’ve had a very normal relationship with my father, with the exception that he’s terribly well known and, so it’s said, one of the most important writers in his domain.

Like all sons, I have found the relationship has added layers to itself over time. These days, I find my relationship with him is just looking in a mirror and consulting with him. Hearing the timbre of his voice in my own. Body posture, mannerisms, ethics, morals, linguistics. All the deep imprintings that are there either from socio-genetics or, if you were to be cruel, parroting. Whatever the reason, I throw my arms around the lifestyle I was given.

My father made a remarkable effort – and one that I am much more impressed with now as a family man myself – to remain in his children’s lives despite a less-than-perfect breakup with my mother. I always saw him. He was always around. He always made gigantic efforts. There was even a time when he wasn’t allowed on the property; to circumnavigate that, he bought a trailer and put it at the T where the dirt road of our house in the south of France connected to the municipal road, and we would walk up the dirt road. A lot was imparted by that. From Los Angeles to the south of France was no small journey. We spent all our holidays with him. Every winter we would go to Montreal, and every summer we would go to Greece.

‘There are times when, no question, I wish we had been able to spend more time together’ – Leonard Cohen and son Adam.

There was always laughter. Despite his notoriety for, I quote, “having a voice like the bottom of an ashtray”, for being “the prince of darkness”, for being famed for his lugubriousness, he is one of the most quick-witted men, and he is generous with his humour. The guy is hilarious. I’ve gone into the family business, and we get a tremendous amount of laughter out of that. Hanging out with him is the best, whether it’s over a tuna sandwich or on the front stoop of his house. He doesn’t like to move much, having been a touring man his whole life. He does love being sedentary.

I’ve learned a lot from him on that stoop. The main inspiration that his life provides is a dedication to his craft. He has an old-world view of it. It’s not the notion of instantaneous success that exists in new generations. His whole life has been a demonstration of the opposite. I remember something he told me when I was 16 and starting to take songwriting seriously. He said there’s a moment when you’re blocked on a song, or on any work, and it’s only when you’re about to quit having put much, much more time than you planned into it that the work begins. That’s when you’ve crossed the threshold of being on the right track. But the nature of my dialogue with him is nearly always instruction. From the manner in which we should greet someone about whom we have reservations, to gender relationships, to the proper dosage of mustard and mayonnaise. We talk about women all the time, too, and, if I may, out of privacy, I’ll keep that princely wisdom to myself. It’s a long-running and possibly incomplete transmission.

We’ve never really fallen out. We’ve had a series of minor misunderstandings that were corrected, and actually served to provide better understanding in the long run. When you have someone in your family who is in such demand, and from whom you derive a sense of identity because of the nature of your relationship, you can start to become covetous of the amount of time spent with that person. There are times when, no question, I wish we had been able to spend more time together.

You want to know some secrets about Leonard Cohen? Here’s the dirt. He loves George Jones and Hank Williams. He travels with one small suitcase. Many of his impeccable suits are actually threadbare. He’s only about 5ft 8in, despite that giant baritone. He awakens at four in the morning and blackens pages every single day of his life. He cuts his own hair. He will find a patch of sun anywhere and sit in it, like a big cat, following that sliver wherever it goes. Although he no longer smokes, there is nothing he would rather do. He makes the best tuna salad I’ve ever had – he seems to have a knack for that. He loves making food for people, in fact. He spends a lot of time in the kitchen. He’s probably the best-known short-order chef in the world.

Adam Cohen is a singer and songwriter

Extracted from My Old Man: Tales of Our Fathers, edited by Ted Kessler, published on 26 May by Canongate, £14.99. To buy a copy for £11.99, visit bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.