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I had to leave school at 14 because my father got injured in the mines and I had to support my family. I was an undertaker's assistant, then a plasterer, before doing my military service in the RAF. All the while, I was doing amateur dramatics and dreaming of getting a scholarship to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

I went to high school in the highlands of Scotland.

When I was 13, I won a scholarship to boarding school. My parents let me choose whether to go, and I decided I wanted to. Afterwards, I went to Cambridge to study law - in a way, I was carrying the academic hopes of my family, as Mum and Dad left school at 14.

I had an Edinburgh, middle-class childhood and a public school education.

I studied for my degree in London and consequently ended up spending five years away from Cornwall. I deliberately moved away from the coast to experience a different way of life.

Of course I've had my moments of wanting to go back to Scotland, and I almost did a couple of times, but other things just came up.

I didn't start traveling abroad until I was 17, but I spent many summers on the beaches of Donegal in Ireland.

When I was 18, I couldn't wait to move away. I was like: 'If I ever have to come back here, I'll kill myself.' Glasgow seemed like failure and death to me back then, but not any more.

When I was 17, I was told I had the choice of enlisting in the Navy or going to jail, so I spent the next three years in the Navy.