Geoffrey Beattie s life has taken him on an astonishing trajectory from an impoverished childhood in Protestant working-class Belfast to a career as a world-renowned psychologist and TV celebrity.
But that journey has brought inevitable stresses and soul-searching as the highly intelligent boy who pored over his schoolbooks in a damp, dilapidated terraced house with an outside toilet transformed himself into the urbane, confident academic enjoying the spoils of material success in England.
That conflict is most apparent in the outworking of his relationship with his late mother Eileen, a clever, stoical, droll Ulsterwoman who didn t suffer fools and was especially adept at cutting her adult son down to size. It s a complex bond he examines in unflinching detail in his new book Selfless, an emotionally-charged memoir that charts the impact of his social mobility on himself and his family. The tension was there right from the start, he says.
Clemmy gathering her eggs
Mind you there was no need to say “spoiler alert” because she simply asked me where I started when opening my Dalesman. She admitted that she usually started with the contents so that she got a flavour of what was to come. I had to admit that I usually went straight to “From the farm” because I am keen to know what those amazing children have been up to and I was not disappointed having read the description of Clemmy gathering eggs – I think that she will go far? I also like to have my next lesson from Amanda in words that I did not know! This month’s word was “heaf” which was a test for tuberculosis when I was a medical student! But, no, it has another meaning – “to become attached to an area of mountain pasture, seldom straying”. There were also lots of puns which make me smile.