I never have reservations about doing anything as long as I’m being paid.

One way of watering down the effects of violence is to approach it in a more lighthearted way. I don’t mean to say that you laugh when somebody has their arm sawn off, but you can diffuse fear with humour.

I could, I think, quite easily have gone to Oxford. I got four good A levels, but my father’s income was such that I wouldn’t have got a grant, and he wouldn’t let me go to university, and that was the end of it.

Parents who listen to their children read are engaging in a most valuable activity.

Vary what the child writes in the home: for example, helping to compose a shopping list, writing and rewriting a favourite family story together, writing a recipe to cook together later, keeping a diary, writing in a photo album that records family experiences, poetry, imaginative or personal stories, and writing jokes and cartoons.

It is natural for a child or adult to have different identities in different contexts which change across time. Identities are about becoming rather than being. It is not only ‘who we are’ or ‘where we have come from’, but also ‘how we are represented’ and ‘what we might become’ and ‘what we cannot be’. Cultural, ethnic or language identity is often about making sense out of our past, present and future.

It was lovely to do The Knock because I haven’t done anything really significant since Doctor Who.

The standard of writing that I’m getting now from ‘Big Finish’ compares very favourably with some of the stuff I was doing on screen in the ’80s.

The parent has been successful in providing the conditions for later growth. Not all flowers bloom early. Some flowers that bloom late in the summer, even in the autumn, retain all the beauty promised in the sowing of the seed.

I do remember reading the script of ‘The Nightmare Fair’ and looking forward to doing it.