Dementia is often regarded as an embarrassing condition that should be hushed up and not spoken about. But I feel passionately that more needs to be done to raise awareness, which is why I became an ambassador for the Alzheimer's Society.

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

My family have been around Northumberland for five generations.

I wish people would take more care of the countryside.

I wanted to be a stage actor but I got stuck on television. It took a couple of years to get used to.

With something like cancer, there is a feeling that you can fight it in some way or control your response to it, but with dementia there is the fear of losing control of your mind and your life.

From the time you are a tiny baby, a parent's love is usually unconditional. Whatever you do, your parents think you are the tops, but when their memory goes, you stop recouping the love you've put in.