Not unlike a lot of performers, as a boy I was painfully shy off stage but when in the spotlight I was in my element. My sister, Maureen, 66, was a beautiful singer but found performing too nerve-racking. I was the complete opposite.

I vividly remember performing in a show put on by my primary school teacher, Mr Frame. I enjoyed it so much that I craved more. I didn’t have to wait long; from the age of 10 I performed on Saturday afternoons at the Glasgow Barrowlands.

Initially, I played the guitar and sang. My first single, I’m Not Too Young, came out when I was 12 and my second, Brain Beat — produced by George Martin, The Beatles’ manager — was released when I was 16. Neither were hits but they were great for my profile.

Throughout that time, I lived in a comfortable house in Garrowhill on the eastern outskirts of Glasgow. My father and I often went home in the dead of night after I had done a show — usually in a social club around central Scotland.

By the time I was about 14, I was working four or five nights a week. As I got older and was no longer the cute kid with a guitar, I sang funny songs and did impersonations. I used a lot of comedy.

My father, Alex, managed me for many years. He was the biggest inspiration in my life. He wasn’t a pushy parent; he was very supportive when he recognised my ambition. He was a funny man and also played guitar. I learnt my first chords from him.

My father was the one who steered me towards using humour. He could see that a career in comedy could last for decades, unlike one as a pop singer. He had great insight.

My son, David, is also a musician. He’s more talented than I was when I was his age. Although I am not his manager, I watch him perform as often as possible. I find myself talking to him the same way my father spoke to me — providing a detailed analysis of what was good and what could be improved.

Every performer needs somebody to provide a post-mortem, because when you are on stage, you’re not aware of how the audience perceives you. While driving me home, my dad would talk to me about my use of the microphone, my chat between songs and so on.

Home was a comfortable, detached house. My father had a good job with the General Post Office (GPO), now BT, and also bought and sold second-hand cars after doing them up. Sometimes he would use the money to bolster my feeble bank balance. He wanted me to be financially secure when I left school so I could perform full-time and choose which work I took on. The GPO was the bread and butter and the cars were the cream cakes.

The cars were sold from a four-car garage at the end of the driveway. I lived there from the age of five to 17, when we moved to a nearby, newly built property.

Being a good car mechanic, it was no surprise my father was also good at DIY. He gutted and redecorated the house. He was proud of it and rarely missed a chance to provide a guided tour to visitors, whether they wanted one or not. “This is the bedroom. I made that fireplace. Here’s an extension I just added,” he would boast.

The house was built in the 1950s and had pebble-dash walls. We backed onto the family that owned the local newsagents. When I was a kid, my mum would send me over the garden wall to get her Capstan Full Strength cigarettes. She smoked until the day she died; it was her one pleasure — a cup of tea and a cigarette.

The lounge was used for visitors, including people buying my dad’s cars. I didn’t get attached to my bedroom; it was not long before we left that I was allowed to decorate it as I wanted. When I finally had free rein, there was a lot of psychedelic orange.

I would chat to my dad’s customers in the lounge. On one occasion, my mum shouted at me for saying my dad had smelly feet. I must have been very young.

When I started doing a lot more TV work, my father stepped down from managing me and thought I should be looked after by a London-based agency. During the 1970s and early 1980s, I did a lot of work on TV in Scotland.

One Hogmanay in the early 1970s, Billy Connolly and I did a TV show together and I remember him saying: “This is going to be our year, son.” It was his year globally and mine in Scotland.

Allan Stewart will appear in Aladdin at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, from November 29 to January 18.

Explore Property

• Buying & Selling

• New Homes

• Overseas

• Interiors

• Investment

• Gardens

• Cool In Your Code

• Specials

• First-time buyer

• Rental Market

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers