Anne-Marie Duff

Well, I guess that my first memories would be colours.

So I would remember the primrose yellow of my cot.

And I remember it was a very sort of 70s design and had a little sticker of a rosebud on it.

Ding, ding, ding.

And also that we had a green glass water jug that we used throughout my childhood for every meal.

But if I had a narrative memory...

When I was very small, when I was three years old, I had major surgery, kidney surgery.

And I was in for a couple of weeks and one of my strongest memories is my mum sitting beside me, just gently blowing on my scar because it was so itchy in the night because she would stay over.

There was just a... I mean, it's very boring, really.

There was just a large cyst inside it.

And, yeah, I was a poorly little... I had a little pear-dropped face for a while.

A little kidney child.

My mother's name was Mary Alice Doherty.

And she was born in Donegal, County Donegal, in Orris, which is a very tiny wee place.

And she moved to London as a child.

She came over with her father and his new wife because my mum's mum passed away when she was a baby.

And he came over to London to work for a while and she stayed in Donegal.

What sort of thing did he do?

The classic work that Irish men would do at that time.

They were either building or, you know, all of those sorts of jobs that nobody wanted to do.