‘You measure every other male by your dad’: Dawn French reflects on a lifetime of grief after losing her father as a teenager

The following content contains references to suicide some readers might find upsetting.

Dawn French has been through many stages of grief since losing her father at the age of 19, and her experiences have also shaped the way she feels about ageing.

Her father Denys was a former RAF engineer who took his own life in September 1977, at the age of 45.

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As well as being a celebrated comedian, Dawn is also a bestselling author, and she's using her latest novel, Enough (released this month,) to help her continue to work through her feelings about the way her dad died.

"Suicide lives in my brain in a way it might not for somebody who hasn’t experienced it so closely," she tells The Times.

She continues, "And as I’ve got older, I want to talk about the big things. I set out to write something I’m a bit afraid to admit: that getting older is difficult, end of life is difficult, suicide is difficult."

The protagonist of her book, Etta, is the same age as Dawn (68.) This has led to some concerned friends to tentatively ask why the star has written a book about a person her own age who considers taking their own life.

However, Dawn explains frankly that the title isn't about someone who has had enough, rather a person who feels their life has been enough.

"What more selfless act could you make than sacrifice your life so that your children don’t have to deal with the crunchy, grim part of it?” she says, although does suggest she doesn't think she could do it herself.

As well as the novel helping her deal with ongoing feelings about the way her father died, the star has also been through many stages of grief, something that always appears to be evolving.

"When you lose your dad at 19 and you have this whole life to go through, [you have] all those stages of grief - from being perplexed to sadness, anger, understanding and forgiveness," she says, adding that writing about it has let her find a more "positive" angle to what happened in her life.

Dawn recalls feeling "rage for a while" after Denys died, thinking, "You selfish f***er, how dare you do that to us?" Those feelings changed over time. "Very quickly I thought, 'Yes, but my dad wouldn’t be that selfish. So let me try and reframe this. Let me think it through further.’" she explains.

She also makes sure she never stops talking about her dad's death to her brother, Gary. "My mum’s gone now, but my brother, Gary, and I always talk about it. Just to check in on each other and to make it OK," Dawn shares.

There's also been conflict over whether the comedian can refer to Denys as a "good dad." She says, "It’s very hard, when you’ve had a suicide in your family, to claim that you had a great dad, because if you had a great dad, then why did that happen?"

However, she recalls happiness, laughter and a dad that instilled a sense of confidence and self-esteem in his daughter, despite the personal issues he was battling.

"You measure every other male by your dad," she says wisely, adding, "That’s your template. Not to say that you can’t make some mistakes - we all do - but you value yourself if you’ve been valued by your dad."

The star has an equally even and measured approach to ageing, something her father didn't get to do.

Dawn says humorously that decisions have been made about whether she'll "take a machete to my face" (she won't be having cosmetic surgery,) because "Nothing will hurt me by criticising my age."