My mum Mary was always a bright, confident and fiercely independent lady.

With your own children, you love them immediately - and with grandchildren, it's exactly the same.

You can't converse with Alzheimer's sufferers in the way you do with others; the dialogue tends to go round in circles.

I'm very good at being out of work.

With all the lines I have to learn for TV scripts, I don't think I have any problems with forgetfulness - that's brain exercise enough for me.

With something like cancer, there is a feeling that you can fight it in some way or control your response to it, but with dementia there is the fear of losing control of your mind and your life.

Walking is my main method of relaxation. I don't go over my lines or try to solve the world's problems, I just enjoy the scenery and the wildlife.

People think I'm thick because of the characters I play. I think I'm brighter than the characters. Well, I hope I am.

I've been going to Bamburgh for holidays since I was a child.

My family have been around Northumberland for five generations.

The more telly you do, the more it feels like a factory.

Sometimes just breathing is enough.

Always, in all circumstances, wear comfortable shoes. You never know when you may have to run for your life.

I love to play bid whist as much as I love football.

Back then, all the networks were still making a movie a week, virtually. So I did five of them that year. So it was just a nonstop... '92 was a great, nonstop ride in Vancouver.

A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.

As Hegel well knew, the ascent of reason has never followed a straight line.

I loved performing every week, but all of the activities and amazing people we met when we were not filming stick out to me the most.

For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.

I call it viewing from afar, they call it stalking.

I don't think you make a choice to be an artist. There was no decision for me. I've been expressing myself this way since I can remember.