People keep asking me if I'll marry again. It's as if after you've had one car crash you want another.

When I got into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, a doctor told me to give up the course as I'd be totally deaf within a couple of years. But I refused to give in.

But as far as my work is concerned, I see no impediment, and various advantages, to being deaf.

When I look in the mirror, I sometimes think I'm getting old, but then I have two generations behind me so that helps puts things into perspective. I am a grandmother now, but at least my nine-year-old grandson Jude calls me Glamma and not Granny.

When I was young I used to smother myself with olive oil mixed with a dash of vinegar to keep the flies away and lay in the sunshine for hours on end. But we knew no better then. Now we know how stupid that was.

My worst holiday was in Athens when I was a young drama student at Rada in 1965. I ran out of money. I had my things stolen and I wasn't able to speak a word of the language.

I'm lucky that most of the time I'm on location in amazing places. Most of the time, I don't need holidays, I just stop working.