Growing up with both of your parents pretending to be other people for a living is much the same as anyone else.

We all pretend to be someone else when we’re at work.

Like when I worked in a pub, I pretended to be someone who was patient and friendly, someone who loved being moaned at about the price of a pint, I deserved an Oscar I tell you.

Whilst this may be true, with acting, it’s something new with every job.

One month my Dad’s driving his car over his neighbour’s lawns, the next he’s chief of police (on the telly of course, he’s not gone mad).

When I was a baby, me and my mum went to visit my dad on the set of a film called Skallagrigg.

My dad’s character had to be aged and by the time we arrived he looked like an incredibly old man, something I was too young to understand and wouldn’t stop crying at the fact of being held by this hideous old fella who sounded a lot like my dad.

I even managed to get on screen myself sometimes.

Even before I wanted to be an actor myself, my mum enlightened me to the fact that I once played her child in a programme called Love and Reason, with Kevin McNally playing her husband.

The funny thing is, I actually played the part of her daughter, being too young to distinguish. As Kevin and my mum argued in a dramatic scene, I’m perched in my highchair throwing things on the floor, clearly attempting to steal the scene.

A premonition of things to come it seems.

I didn’t always want to be an actor.

This was proven when my dad was chosen to go on the programme This Is Your Life. He was surprised with the Big Red Book on the set of Merseybeat.

My mum knew that Michael Aspel was going to ask me what I wanted to be when I was older and so started to try get an idea of what 10-year-old me would say.

When my mum tested the waters of what I wanted to be, I gave two, quite alarming, answers.

My first choice was that I wanted to be a busker, singing in the streets for chump change (reach for the stars eh?).

The second choice was what raised alarm bells, as I said quite confidently that I wanted to be an assassin. Don’t ask why.

As Michael Aspel quickly learned not to.