Local MSP Kenny Gibson has given a personal account of his terror at growing up with an alcoholic father - but now hopes to use his experience to help others.

The SNP"s Kenny Gibson recently told Holyrood of his childhood dread as he and his family waited for his father to return from the pub.

Based on that experience, the MSP - who narrowly defeated Labour"s Allan Wilson in the Cunninghame North election in May - urged fellow parliamentary members to make greater efforts in fighting the problems caused by alcohol.

Mr Gibson explained how living with his father"s problems had made him wary of alcohol. In fact, he did not have a drink until he was 23 and even now still drinks moderately.

He said: 'My father was an alcoholic - a chronic alcoholic. And it killed him at the age of only 57.

'By then, he was a wreck of a man - a pregnant skeleton that doctors will recognise as often being the end stage of being an alcoholic.

'In the last 25 years of his life, I don"t think I saw my father sober half a dozen times. And I doubt, over those years, if anyone in our home had a decent uninterrupted night"s sleep.

'We"d a terror of the clock striking 10 o"clock because the pubs closed and my father was due home.' He said this was why his twin sister Janis was desperate to leave their Glasgow home at just 15 and why he left two years later, in the hope that their mum Iris - also an SNP councillor - would follow.

Mr Gibson added: 'We thought that as soon as we left home, that mum had been staying at home for us and that she would move out. She never did, she took the view she had married for better or worse and stayed with him. She loved him for what he was and not for what he had become.

'My father did not recognise he had a problem until he was completely unable to deal with it.

'In his view, he was able to get up for work in the morning and it wasn"t really an issue for him.' Mr Gibson told MSPs: 'I have no doubt my upbringing was not so different from many thousands of Scots who have had their lives blighted by the problem of alcohol.' He called on the parliament to do all they could to change attitudes and behaviour in this area and he highlighted the problem of 'foetal alcohol spectrum disorder' in kids.

Mr Gibson said he had decided to highlight his own case to show how real lives were shaped by alcoholism.

He said: 'It was extremely difficult growing up in family where my father was a chronic alcoholic, for a number of reasons. The household was not as prosperous as it might otherwise have been. But the main issue was that it was extremely disruptive.

He said over the years of his drinking, his father - also Kenneth - lost his sense of self awareness and was only interested in his next drink.

Mr Gibson stated that when his own son Ross was born, he went to the pub to tell his dad that he had become a grandfather for the first time.

But his dad told him: 'Can"t stop now son, I"ve got a hot tip for the 3.30.' He said his father had started drinking during national service in the Navy, in the days when there was still a daily rum ration.