Kevin Whately

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

I love taking the boat to the Farne Islands, a few miles offshore. It has a National Trust bird sanctuary with seals and every sort of seabird you can imagine.

Oxford is a funny place, as it is a mixture of town and gown. You have the students at the main university and at Oxford Brookes, but there is also a big working-class community.

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

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

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.

I don't like two-dimensional characters who are obviously villains from the moment they walk on stage.

In TV, you just have to decide the night before exactly how you're going to say it and stick with that. You can't kick it around; you haven't got time.

When I have time, I really enjoy cooking.

I hate anything with 'celebrity' in the title, where people are playing to the cameras all the time.

I only really like to watch things like 'Time Team.' I'd rather be out walking the dog. It's all reality TV, which, as an actor, I detest.

I catch an old 'Morse' on ITV3. I've never thought I looked particularly like my son. He's taller than me and blond. But when I see Lewis walk into a room with John Thaw, it's like my son has just come onto the screen. That's very strange indeed!