I was born in a little pebble-dashed council house in Murray, an area of East Kilbride. East Kilbride, just south of Glasgow, was a new town, and people were vetted before they could move there. You had to have certain skills. My dad was a tool-maker and there were loads of engineering factories — such as Rolls-Royce — so he was welcomed.

My parents, John and Susan, have known each other since they were 12, and have been married for nearly 60 years. They were from Glasgow and lived round the corner from each other in the Gorbals tenements. Moving to East Kilbride, to a three-bedroom terraced house with a garden, was a real step up in the world for them.

They moved to the house in Chalmers Drive in 1958. They already had my sisters, Joan and Liz, and I came along in 1962. Joan and Liz were 11 months apart, and I was five years younger than Joan. My sisters shared the biggest bedroom. I had the smallest. I hated being on my own, so I was always shouting to my sisters through the walls.

My sisters tell me that when I was four or five, they set me up to do the whole “I want a dog!” crying thing. I must have been a good actor even then, because my parents got Max, a mongrel the size of a whippet. Of course, Mum ended up looking after him.

When I was a kid, I was always coming back from school to find Mum had rearranged the furniture. She was a cleaner at Marks & Spencer, and worked early mornings. She was home by nine o’clock, and I guess she was bored. Sometimes even wardrobes would have been moved. She is tiny, and I’d think, “How the hell did she do it?”

My dad would come in from work and be tired, so he’d eat his tea and fall asleep. It’s funny, now I’m a father myself, when I’m home, I spend all the time in the world with my kids. But Dad was a working man. I don’t remember him being around, apart from at Christmas and for our two-week holiday.

Every now and again, my mum would whip my dad up off the sofa to do some DIY. The living room was actually a living room-cum-bar, with Optics on the wall and a vinyl bar bought from the Co-op. The room was furnished with orange-and-brown swirly

carpet, a brown sofa and a really classy brick-clad fireplace thing. It was a proper 1970s cliché. My parents had great parties and were wellied every weekend. It was like The Ice Storm without the keys! We had a record player, and there’d always be singing. They loved Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra and Jerry Vale. I can still sing Where’s the Playground Susie?

My upbringing was idyllic. The street was full of kids, and we all got on brilliantly. During Wimbledon, we all played tennis; football was our default setting. When it was the Olympics, we held marathons and tried pole-vaulting using the pole that held up the washing line. We did the hurdles by running through everybody’s back garden and jumping the fences.

Every year, we’d go camping with our neighbours, the Bradens. We called them Aunty Ellen and Uncle Frank. Their son Paul was two years older than me. I aspired to be Paul’s friend and, as I was good at football, he used to let me play with the big guys. Every summer my dad would get the tent out, to air it before we went away. All the kids in the street would end up sleeping in it for a week, and Mum would bring us out plates of chips.

We also went to Arbroath, but we were posh then, and stayed in a caravan.

Joan and Liz both got married and left home at 18. There are some terrible 1970s wedding photographs of me in a double-breasted brown pinstripe suit, with streaked hair. Aunty Ellen’s sister was a hairdresser, and Paul got his hair done. I was trying to look like him, so she did mine too. I remember having my hair pulled through a rubber skull cap.

Now I’m godfather to Paul’s son. Paul was in California for a while, and when he lived in Los Angeles, I took him and Aunty Ellen — who was visiting — to the premiere of The Mummy. We got the big car and went to the party. It was great.

Mum and Dad are proud of me, sometimes embarrassingly so. When we go out, they walk behind me, because they like to see everybody staring at me. It’s freaky!

I left home at 16. I went to work for the electricity board and had to stay in a YMCA in Cumbernauld. Then I went to college in Glasgow and shared a flat with friends. My parents have never moved from Chalmers Drive. They bought into the whole Thatcher thing and purchased their council house. For their generation, owning your own home was a great thing, like being a member of the aristocracy.

Last year, my mum had a bad accident in the house. She fell down the stairs at night with her wee socks on, as she was going down to make a cup of tea. My sisters and I are trying to get them to sell and buy a ground-floor flat, but my mum just won’t move.

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