So tell me about growing up and what it was like, because this is my favourite place in the world.

I know.

You love to come here, don't you? But when I was growing up, I was born in 1946.

So just after the war, people are starting to enjoy themselves again.

And the summer, it was swarming with holidaymakers from mostly from London, but from further afield, too.

And it was very, very lively.

But of course, with the advent of Freddie Laker and the cheap flights to Spain, people started going there.

And the wonderful Sir Michael Caine.

Wow.

What was the feel of the bed covers? What, uh, how many rooms were in the house? So all these details creates a memory so that when you eventually come to do, uh, an improvisation, you, you're not inventing anything.

You're not making anything up.

You're just relaying what you, what you know, what you, what you've created.

And when my character got to the age of four, for instance, he said, "Would she notice if, if the mother got fat?" I said, "Well, yeah, we've already spoke about that woman down the road," 'cause we, y- you create a whole neighborhood, um, when she was having a baby.

So if Mum was getting fat, she'd ask, "Are you having a baby?" And he said, "And, and she would be right," and that baby turned out to be Timothy Spall.

It's been like, yeah, for sure.

Um, I have to mention Vera as well.

Yeah.

This, yeah, I suppose...

Yeah, my section of the story kind of came first.

We started shooting it first and, um, yeah, I was kind of thrown in at the deep end.

I was cast very last minute, and so it was just about absorbing the scripts as much as possible.

Um, I read, I didn't read all of the book, but I read a good bit of the book just with whatever time I had left, and, and I loved it.

The, the book was brilliantly detailed.

[laughs]