Cliff McCabe remembers the excitement and wonder at the age of nine when his family moved house from their tenement in Cessnock in the south side of Glasgow and he discovered a bathroom for the first time.

“I misunderstood my mum, I thought she meant a cupboard where we would put the tin bath. I didn’t realise you actually got rooms with baths in them. I’d never seen one,” he laughs.

The author of recently published Ten’s a Crowd is reminiscing about growing up in the early 1970s with eight other siblings, initially in a room and kitchen and then in a three-bedroom council flat.

The drama, humour and high junks of family life are the basis of the tales in his first book, now in print after selling more than 10,000 download copies online.

He started writing after reading a best-seller and telling his wife Eileen he could do better. She told his to get on with it and the rest is history.

“The tales are exaggerated, based on real experiences. Some of it is made up, some of it is imagined situations and I write about how my family would react. It is a fictional account with wee nuggets based on true stories in there,” says Cliff, 54, who now lives in Kirkintilloch and has two grown-up sons.

“Family life was great, it was very adventurous, there were a lot of us but, to be honest, it wasn’t that unusual. There were two or three other big families in our neighbourhood.

“The book tries to capture the funniest parts of that – and some of the most dramatic episodes.”

One of those days was January 2, 1971: the Ibrox disaster which led to 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries after an Old Firm game.

“I was there that day with a group of friends, I was very young, and my younger brother James went missing,” remembers Cliff.

“He came to no harm but it was quite a traumatic few hours until we found him.”

There were plenty of happy occasions too, including the double wedding celebrations of Cliff’s brother and sister.

“There was about 40 or 50 of us going so one of my brothers was charged with finding transport to get us all from one church to the other,” he says.

“So he decided it would be a good idea to get his friend to come along with a Corporation bus, who then picked up passengers on the way.

“We had a full wedding party and a few old women who were a bit bamboozled by it all.”

Stair-heid toilets, midgie rakers, Hogmanay parties and his mother having her eighth child at the age of 45 – at the same time her daughter and daughter-in-law were both pregnant – all feature in Ten’s a Crowd.

With four older siblings and three younger ones, Cliff is placed firmly at the centre of the family. In the book he laments forever wearing hand-me-downs but though the McCabes may have been cash poor they were rich in morals – usually reinforced by a clip round the ear from Cliff’s mother or an older sister.

All these years on and they are still close, getting together for family celebrations and even a holiday earlier this summer.

What do they think of their alter-egos in print? The names may have been changed but it is quite clear who everyone is.

“They love the book. My sister Christine now refers to herself as Darlene, her character’s name,” says Cliff.

“Darlene is a very scatty teenager, very princess-y and precious. She tries to use long words and always gets them wrong.

“The first time she was on an aeroplane, for example, it suffered from a lot of flatulence. I think she maybe meant turbulence.

“Everyone recognises themselves and they like them – so far. We’ll see what they say when they read more.”

Now six volumes have been published in e-book format with more coming out in print next year. It was the success of the online versions, topping the local Amazon bestseller list, which caught the eye of Ayr-based Fort Publishing and brought Cliff a book deal.

He has written the tales of the fictional McCallister family up to 1985 but intends to bring them right up to the present day.

The royalties haven’t flooded in yet and Cliff jokes about not giving up his day job managing an industrial supply company in Easterhouse just yet.

He is very proud of his first book, with eye-catching cover artwork by Andy Bridge, who designed the cover for the Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi.

Ten’s a Crowd by Cliff McCabe is published by Fort Publishing, priced £7.99.