Brotherly love

I’ve been viewing back-to-back episodes every evening with my 14-year-old, the youngest, who loves it too. Much of this this warts-and-all series resonates with my own experience of desperately trying to keep control of five boisterous, rambunctious boys as they create merry mayhem and leave a trail of chaos and destruction in their wake.

Albert has always known me as a screaming, overbearing control freak: “But that’s just what your older brothers did to me. I was calm, chilled and relaxed before they came along,” I said as we watched Malcolm and his brothers break furniture, get into trouble at school and upset the neighbours with their mischievous antics: “Just the sort of things they used to put me through.”

In the TV series, the older brothers are particularly mean to the younger ones. Which is just how it was in our house. I remember a friend asking Patrick, son number three, after he started secondary school if his older brothers talked to him at school: “William ignores me,” he replied. “It’s nice that Charlie speaks to you at least,” she said. “No, Charlie just thumps me on the arm as he walks past,” he said.

But then Patrick used to come home and thump his younger brother in the arm. And so it went on.

“Do you remember how mean they were to you, Albert?” I asked, recalling the time I had to rescue him from the tree in the middle of the garden after they bound him up with rope and hung him by his feet, before spinning him around.

Knowing he was terrified of a particularly hideous Halloween mask, they used to play ‘peek-a-boo’ with him as a baby, his chuckles turning to ear-piercing screams once they suddenly appeared, wearing the mask, over the side of his cot.

Albert remembered. And he went on to tell me about a few incidents I was unaware of, such as when they showed him a clip from the psychological horror movie The Others, featuring a wizened old woman, which scared him.

“They would tell me they had a surprise for me in the living room, but when I ran in, they’d be playing that scene from the film on the TV,” he recalled. But the worst thing they ever did, we both agreed, was the infamous dog prank.

With their dad and I out for the evening, Albert’s older brothers Patrick and Roscoe were in charge when a lady arrived at the door with a stray dog she’d found.

Neighbours had told her it was our family name on the tag. And, sure enough, the dog was labelled with our surname, along with a phone number. “It’s not ours but we’ll keep it and phone the owner,” offered Patrick kindly.

Albert, who was in bed, had been begging for a dog for years. And it was his birthday in a few days’ time: “Albert, quick, wake up,” they shouted once the lady had gone. “Mum ordered a present for your birthday and it’s just arrived.”

The poor child was ecstatic: “You should have seen him, Mum. He’s been running all around the house with it, hugging and kissing it and saying that he loves it. It’s so funny – he’s even given it a name,” the boys laughed when I got home.

Albert’s face fell when I told him the dog wasn’t actually ours: “How could your brothers be so nasty and cruel?” I said, aghast. Looking back on what they did, I can still barely believe it now. But it’s no worse than what Malcolm and his brothers got up to, which makes us feel a little better. We loved the series so much, we’ve decided to have a break of a month, then watch it all over again.

In the meantime, our evenings are not half as much fun. Albert has taken to watching old family videos, which we stopped making around the time he was a toddler.

Three of his older brothers have now left home. The fourth is due to leave in September. The house has got quieter and quieter. Soon Albert will be on his own.

I watched them all together on the screen, running around the garden, squirting each other with water: “You miss them, don’t you?” I said.

He nodded: “They used to make me laugh.”