Baz Ashmawy has admitted he didn’t find out about his father’s death until six months later.
The TV presenter opened up about his father’s passing on Brian Dowling’s podcast ‘Death Becomes Him’ this week.
Speaking about his relationship with his father, Mohammed Ussri Ismaill, Baz said: “Me and my dad had this staggered back and forth relationship where I lived with him when I was 15 after my granddad died.”
“I went to Cairo and I lived with him in Cairo for a few years. We became like mates, he was very funny and he made me laugh a lot and I made him laugh a lot but there were certain things that I couldn’t get over.”
“I asked very direct questions like, ‘Why would you leave and why would you do this?'”
“Whatever happened over the years by the time I was 18/19 I was in Cairo and we had a massive fight, I think I was 20 actually, and we had a huge fight, like massive.”
“I decided, ‘F**k it, I’m done with him’, and I was living in Sydney and then I moved to London. And then he died and I found out when I was 21.”
Because of “family politics”, Baz admitted he didn’t find out about his dad’s death until six months after he passed away.
Baz explained: “I was angry, I was angry more than anything else. He had passed away six months previously before I found out.”
“In Islam, they bury very fast and someone was in charge of tracking me down and of course, I was globally all over the place.
“So by the time I got to Cairo I was raging and people were very solemn. They have this thing in Islam where you don’t talk bad of the dead and I was like, ‘Well you can f*****g forget that I’m ready here to straighten s**t out.”
“I think I was so angry because I wanted to have a fight with him. I wanted to have it out with him and I never got to.”
Baz continued: “And with that I did love him quite a lot and I suppose I felt robbed of that.
“And that’s the thing you have to remember when someone goes it’s that all the things you wanted to say, all the things you wanted to ask, those conversations that you needed to have… they’re just gone and you’re desperately trying to get stories from other people and piece things together yourself.
“It took me a long time to come to terms with all that,” he added.
