Now that winter is almost over, many enthusiastic garden enthusiasts have already started preparing their outdoor space for the coming summer.

But before you run outside to work on your garden, find out what common task could potentially destroy the grass, as explained by the gardener, the one and only Monty Don.

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Although the lawns need to be mowed in March, there is a crucial mistake to avoid, Monty shared with fans on his website.

According to the expert – who recently confirmed the return of iconic BBC series – fellow garden enthusiasts should not mow their lawn ‘too short’.

“Just give it a light trim for the rest of this month,” the whiz kid explained the mail.

“This promotes good root growth and the grass will therefore be a lot healthier and better able to withstand summer drought.”

The 68-year-old, who has been dubbed a ‘sex siren’ by admirers, also urged gardeners to take a different approach when working on their outdoor space.

‘Put your efforts into healthy grass rather than fighting perceived ‘problems’ such as daisies, moss, ants, worms, moles, plantains, dandelions and fairy rings.

“If the grass is healthy, nine times out of ten everything will take care of itself.”

According to the whizz, you can also tell a lot about the health of your lawn just by looking at the grass – and it’s bad news if your garden is covered in moss.

”The best grass likes very well-drained soil. For example, moss is always a symptom of poor drainage, exacerbated by shade.

“Unfortunately, even the best prepared soil becomes compacted by felted roots, rain and especially normal family use.”

The answer here, he noted, was to work on it at least once a year – simply by sticking a fork in the soil and then wiggling it back and forth; a process you will need to repeat approximately every 6 inches.

You can then mix together equal portions of sieved topsoil, sharp sand and sieved leaf mold or compost.

For those who don’t have these things, Monty said sharp or silver sand works fine too.

”Spread it over the puncture site and brush it with a stiff broom, filling the holes with the mixture.

“This will improve drainage and nourish the grass,” the guru told his superfans.

When it comes to preparing your lawn for the upcoming warmer season, Monty also urged giving the area ”a good scratch” with a wire rake.

This simple but effective step removes any overwintering thatch and moss, while also allowing light and water into the soil and grass roots.

”Put the debris on the compost and then mow. It will look a little bare for about a week, but will grow back thicker than ever.”

Gardeners’ World star Monty Don has delighted fans by sharing a sweet unearthed photo of his beloved dog Ned as a puppy.

The British horticulturist and presenter, 68, is known for his love of dogs and regularly invites his furry friends to join him on screen – and Ned is no exception.

Viewers have grown to love the adorable golden retriever, who Monty and his wife welcomed into their family in October 2022.

Yesterday, he shared a never-before-seen photo of the pooch when he was a puppy on Instagram.

In a heartwarming moment, Ned lies on the presenter’s lap and drifts off to sleep while his owner watches lovingly.

He captioned the throwback image: “I stumbled across this photo of Ned and I a few days after he joined us in September ’22.”

One fan gushed: ‘Aww Ned, he’s so happy with his new life.’ A second joked: “Honestly, there’s nothing like this feeling.”

Meanwhile, a third wrote: “Nothing beats puppy days, they keep you on your toes but it’s also priceless,” alongside a heart emoji.

Another fan said: ‘They grow so fast. Our Lab came to us in August and now he looks all grown up, but his only ambition is to still sit on my lap.’

Others commented: ‘Too cute. I can’t wait for more Ned in the new season’ and ‘Love Ned. I can’t wait for Gardeners World to start.’

“Such a beautiful picture of perfect love” and “So beautiful Ned,” fans of the pup added.

Someone else commented: ‘Beautiful. Time doesn’t fly, it seems like only a short time ago he was a puppy.’

Although no longer a little puppy, Ned is still the younger of Monty’s two dogs, with Yorkshire Terrier Patti being the older of the pair.

But as a fan of Golden Retrievers, whose names all start with an N, Monty has had quite a group of furry friends over the years.

Monty’s website even has a section dedicated to man’s best friend, which states: ‘I have lived with dogs all my life and therefore it is completely normal for me that wherever I am in the garden I have to be accompanied by one or two dogs.

‘It’s their garden as much as it is mine or any other member of the family. What I take for granted is that they generally do absolutely no damage and completely respect the garden.

‘They (rarely) dig holes or break through the flower beds. They treat the long paths like bowling alleys that they run along in pursuit of the ball we are obliged to throw, but it is harmless enough.’

Broadcast dog Nigel became the surprise star of BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World, receiving his own fan mail, fan accounts on social media and even lending his name to Don’s book Nigel: My Family And Other Dogs.

However, the beloved pooch sadly died in May 2020 after ‘suddenly falling ill with violent, unstoppable seizures’.

The television personality paid tribute to his ‘old friend’ via his Twitter and Instagram accounts at the time, telling his followers that Nigel was ‘happy, healthy and his usual calm, sweet self’ until the end.

In October last year, three years after the loss of Nigel, Monty sadly announced that his other beloved dog Nell had died of cancer – also a golden dog.

He wrote on October 21: ‘I wanted to tell you about my new book coming out next week but that can wait as my dear sweet Nell passed away last night.

“She was diagnosed with cancer in June and every day this summer has been a gift, but it’s over now.”

He added: ‘We buried her in the garden next to Nigel, wrapped in one of my jackets with flowers, balls and her favorite biscuits.’

Ned’s new photo comes just after Monty returned to our TV screens, having recently dismissed rumors that he was leaving the much-loved Gardeners’ World show.

But while he continues to delight audiences, the horticulture presenter has also spoken openly about the challenges he has faced in the past with his physical and mental health.

Speaking to Radio Times Magazine last year, the media personality revealed he is likely to give up the hit show’s ‘relentless treadmill’ as he approaches his 70s.

However, last week he told The One Show that he would be staying at Gardeners’ World for ‘at least another three years’.

In the meantime, he starred in three episodes of ‘Monty Don’s Spanish Gardens’ – the first two have already aired and the third will be released on March 8.

It was filmed last year when the presenter spent seven weeks in Spain in April, May, June and October, covering more than 40 different gardens across Spain.

By Zeenia Naqvee

Published: 11:23 EST, March 6, 2024 | Updated: 11:24 EST, March 6, 2024

 

Comic geniuses, the lot of them. Few people could disagree that the six stars of Monty Python, the troupe behind TV’s most surreal sketch show, were all individually brilliant.

With a combined IQ approaching 1,000, they might be the most intellectually qualified comedians in history. John Cleese has a law degree from Cambridge University. Terry Gilliam studied physics, political science and fine art in Los Angeles. All of the others — Michael Palin, Eric Idle, the late Terry Jones and Graham Chapman — graduated from Oxbridge.

Yet, they apparently don’t have a business brain cell between them. With perhaps Palin as the exception, their record of financial mismanagement, legal entanglements and hapless investments is feckless beyond belief.

You wouldn’t trust them to run the proverbial whelk stall. In fact, the whelks themselves could probably do a better job.

The surviving Pythons have been feuding, on and off, for years – and now at least two of their daughters are involved, spreading the animosity across the generations. This week, 80-year-old Idle has bemoaned his poverty. ‘I don’t know why people always assume we’re loaded,’ he complained on X (formerly Twitter). ‘Python is a disaster. I have to work for my living. Not easy at this age.’

Idle was the driving force behind Spamalot, the hit West End and Broadway musical based on their 1975 Arthurian movie Monty Python And The Holy Grail. It grossed nearly £120million during its long runs, with Idle taking the lion’s share of royalties – more than ten times the amount most of the others received, according to a bitter John Cleese.

Yet last year Idle put his five-bedroomed house in the Hollywood Hills on the market for $6.5million (£5.14million). It has a wine cellar, swimming pool, koi carp pond and gardens Idle calls ‘an enchanted forest’. He bought it for north of $1million in the mid-’90s with his wife, former model Tania Kosevich, and ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were regular visitors. It has now sold, he says.

Idle heaps the blame for his altered fortunes on Terry Gilliam’s 43-year-old daughter Holly, a media lawyer who assumed management of the Python brand in 2014.

‘I guess if you put a Gilliam child in as your manager, you should not be so surprised,’ he sniped. How true the allegation is, we don’t know, but Idle doubled down by claiming: ‘One Gilliam is bad enough. Two can take out any company.’

Idle’s daughter Lily, a 33-year-old photographer and mental health campaigner, chimed in on social media: ‘I’m so proud of my dad for finally, finally, finally starting to share the truth. He has always stood up to bullies and narcissists and absolutely deserves reassurance and validation for doing so.’

Gilliam, meanwhile, harboured doubts of his own – in an unguarded moment at a party a few years ago, he sounded off about his least favourite Pythons. Idle was a pathetic case, he said, clinging on to his life in Hollywood long after his career was dead. Cleese was slightly more bankable, but an equally ‘miserable git’.

Holly Gilliam was a co-producer of the Monty Python Live (Mostly) reunion shows in 2014 at the O2 arena in London, staged when Terry Jones was beginning to show signs of the dementia that would go on to kill him six years later.

At the time, it was estimated each of the five stars made £2.2million from the ten performances.

For most people, that’s a lifetime’s earnings crammed into a fortnight.But to the Pythons, it was a reluctant obligation, forced on them by a disastrous court case – resulting from just one of a catalogue of guileless decisions and poor financial judgments, going back decades.

These created an atmosphere of intense mistrust between the stars, which increased to outright loathing in some cases. When Idle sneers at Gilliam and his family, the comments are not meant in jest. There’s real acid in them.

Cracks opened up in the group even while the Pythons were writing their Flying Circus sketches for the BBC in the early 1970s. Cleese threatened to leave after the second series, and did quit after the third, in 1973.

But he was persuaded to rejoin in 1975, for the Holy Grail film. Idle, a besotted admirer of British rock groups, was coaxing bands into investing cash – about £10,000 each from Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Genesis and Jethro Tull.

‘They are the best backers,’ he crowed. ‘They don’t care and they don’t interfere, they don’t say, ‘Oh, there should be another scene over here’. And they didn’t want the money back.’

Bungs from rockers were never going to be enough to finance the Holy Grail, though. Palin’s diaries reveal the Pythons had been in negotiations for years with producers and wheeler-dealers, often with a naivety that boggles the mind. At a party to launch a potboiler of a Python book in November 1973, one producer worked his way around the room with a sheaf of documents.

‘John Gledhill had with him a sheet of proposals, which towards the end of the party he was getting people to sign,’ Palin noted in his diary. ‘I couldn’t take much of it in but seeing other signatures, and presuming it was merely a contract for story development in order to get the £6,000 front money, I too signed.’

Four days later, everyone was having second thoughts. The Pythons met at Cleese’s house: ‘No one seemed to be talking to each other. It was like a morgue,’ said Palin.

Another producer named Mark Forstater ‘ran through the clauses. It was increasingly clear that we were being asked to sign away our copyright on the film, which is tantamount to signing away every bargaining counter that Python ever had’. Palin worried that all this wrangling was going to end in a ‘personal tangle’ – made worse as ‘there is no villain of the piece, no easy target who we can slander and malign. Both Gledhill and Mark are nice people’.To Palin, a genuinely lovely and loyal man, there is no higher praise.

Few people ever describe Cleese as ‘nice’. But he too failed to see the perils of trusting self-style producers and financial advisers.

In a candid moment two years ago, he admitted: ‘I never knew how much money I had. I remember in America someone asked me where my investments were and I said, ‘I have no idea at all’.

‘I never understand money and I don’t find it very interesting, which is a real disadvantage in the world that we live in. I advise anybody who is a bit vague about it to become less vague because it has cost me a lot.

‘I have just relied on people and in one or two cases that has been very good, but in one or two others, it has been disastrous.’

The ‘personal tangle’ with Mark Forstater reached a crisis in 2013, when the producer – by now styling himself ‘the seventh Python’ – claimed that he was owed royalties as a co-creator of the film.

‘It may have been what he wanted but it was never going to be accepted by the Pythons,’ protested Palin at a high court hearing. ‘He was not the creator of the film. He came on board, he became the producer, but I don’t think he was entitled to anything beyond that.’

A judge disagreed and the Pythons were ordered to pay more than £1million in royalties and legal costs. By then, Cleese was so furious at the uneven share-out of the spoils from Spamalot that he was referring to Eric Idle as ‘Yoko’.

To compare him to the woman who supposedly broke up The Beatles was a particularly vicious jibe, since Idle was so proud of his friendships within the band.

Idle axed Cleese’s recorded contribution, as the voice of God, from Spamalot, saying, ‘I’ve surgically removed him. He’s had plenty of money already – he’s always in financial crisis. I just sit at home watching the cheques come in, then I send them on to John in case he’s getting married again.’

That was a barbed reference to Cleese’s cataclysmic £12.5million divorce from third wife Alyce Faye Eichelberger in 2007. The settlement cleaned him out, forcing him to sell off his art collection and memorabilia from box office hits such as A Fish Called Wanda, as well as his house in Holland Park, west London, which went for £2.5million. He also gave Eichelberger the deeds to their £1million apartment on New York’s swanky Upper West Side. The O2 shows in 2014 went some small way to restoring his finances, but the sell-out performances did not satisfy Idle, who wanted to continue. Palin blocked that, partly as he knew his closest friend in the gang, Terry Jones, was more unwell than most realised.

‘This is the last time we’ll be working together,’ Palin told the BBC that year. He also hinted that the blame lay with Idle and Cleese for being prima donnas.

‘John and Eric had lifestyles, how can I say it, they were slightly more complicated. They wanted to go on holidays in Barbados and all that, rather more than Terry and myself, who were just happy going to have a pint at the pub. They were stars and we weren’t, and the trouble with stars is they can be a bit difficult. So there were difficulties now and then between those who had higher expectations of life and those of us at the humbler end of the writing spectrum.’

Despite signing that film rights agreement he knew little about, Palin has displayed the greatest financial acumen of the Pythons, having bought and knocked through two houses either side of the north London terrace property he’s lived in since the late 1960s. Jones left a financial mess when he died aged 77, in 2020, eight years after marrying his second wife Anna Soderstrom – a Swedish knitwear designer who was 41 years his junior and nearly a decade younger than his two children from a previous marriage.

In 2016 he signed a will in her favour, which children Bill and Sally claimed to be ‘an effective total disinheritance’. He had already transferred his £2.8million north London home jointly into Anna’s name with his own. It was alleged that, two days after the will was signed, Anna moved out – taking their daughter Siri and leaving Terry to be looked after by carers.

Despite directing the Python films, including Life Of Brian in 1979, and pursuing a second successful career as an academic (he was an expert on Chaucer), Jones was perennially broke.

The money from the O2 shows, he admitted, might finally help him to pay off his mortgage.

Terry Gilliam, the Flying Circus cartoonist, enjoyed the most illustrious of the post-Python careers, as a Hollywood director. His films include Brazil, starring Robert De Niro, The Fisher King with Robin Williams, and Twelve Monkeys, starring Bruce Willis.

But he had a reputation for financial recklessness that terrified the most profligate L.A. investors. The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, in 1988, began with a $23million budget, doubling over time to $46million – £47million and £94million at today’s values. Despite this, it took only $8million (£17million).

Still, in 2015 he was reckoned to be the wealthiest Python, with a bank balance of perhaps £25million. Cleese was the worst off, with a reputed £6million… and that was probably optimistic. Since the split with Eichelberger, he has staged repeated ‘alimony tours’, a gruelling schedule of live performances that he calls ‘feeding the beast’. He left his homes in Britain and Montecito, California, to live on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, which levies no income tax or capital gains tax.

‘Apparently I got off lightly,’ he complains, ‘because my lawyer points out how much more I would have had to pay, had my ex-wife contributed anything to the relationship – if we had children, or even a two-way conversation.’

Again, this financial catastrophe was caused by naivety that beggars comprehension.

When Cleese told his friend the film director Michael Winner that he and Eichelberger were planning to divorce, the comedian announced airily: ‘This is going to be friendly and quick.’ Winner retorted: ‘What planet are you on? It’ll be horrific.’

A year later, wise long after the event, Cleese grumbled: ‘If ever there were a case for prenuptial agreements, this is it.’

He’s still paying. Unable to tour in lockdown, he was reduced to recording ‘a personalised threat or insult or taunt’ for fans.

Charging £249 a time, Cleese was hardly on to a money-spinner. But if Idle is as penniless as he claims, he might want to consider it, too.

Ind vs Eng Tests: Panesar thought it would be interesting to see how the Indian squad handles the situation when senior players – Rohit and Kohli retire.

Delhi: Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are easily the two most prolific batsmen of the generation. And that's why it's a frightening prospect to even think of India playing without them, and that's exactly what former England spinner Monty Panesar feels. In an exclusive interaction on the sidelines of 'One World, One Family Cup', Panesar was asked who is the young Indian cricketer who excites him the most. While mentioning Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rinku Singh; Panesar also thought it would be interesting to see how the Indian team handles the situation when senior players – Rohit and Kohli retire.

“The most exciting right now is Rinku Singh. It will be interesting to see when both Virat and Rohit leave. Once Rohit and Kohli are gone, a huge gap will be left behind. If you look at the South Africa Test series, there is only Kohli who scored and looked comfortable. That's the reality, you see. Take these two out, the gap is wide at the moment and the SA tour has shown that. So there is actually a reality check about where the next Kohli will come from. And that's why you have to let Rohit and Kohli play a little more and not throw their boots away quickly,” Panesar told India.com.

Indian squad for the first two Tests against England: Rohit Sharma (c), Shubman Gill, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Dhruv Jurel (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohd. Siraj, Mukesh Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah (vc) and Avesh Khan.

The opening Test will take place at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad from January 25.

Meanwhile, England suffered a major blow as star batsman Harry Brook was ruled out due to personal reasons in the Test series against India starting next week. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has appointed Surrey's Dan Lawrence as Brook's replacement. Lawrence will join the England Test squad on Monday.

Tom Wilkinson best known for playing Gerald Arthur Cooper in the 1997 comedy The Full Monty died ‘suddenly’ aged 75 on Saturday.

Wilkinson was awarded a Bafta for best supporting actor in The Full Monty which followed a group of redundant steelworkers from Sheffield who decide to set up an all-male striptease act to earn a living.

Across a glittering career spanning nearly 50 years, Wilkinson also starred in the 1998 romcom Shakespeare in Love, Christopher Nolan’s 2005 blockbuster Batman Begins and 2011 action thriller Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. 

The British comedy The Full Monty was released in 1997 to critical acclaim and took the box office by surprise, becoming the highest grossing film in the UK at the time.

The show also starred Robert Carlyle will return as Gaz, Mark Addy as Dave, Lesley Sharp as Jean, Hugo Speer as Guy, Paul Barber as Horse, Steve Huison as Lomper, Wim Snape as Nathan.

After the sad death of Wilkinson, MailOnline takes a look at where the rest of The Full Monty cast are now…

ROBERT CARLYLE: GAZ

Already a big name thanks to Danny Boyle’s television series Hamish Macbeth and another Boyle production, Trainspotting, Robert Carlyle, now 60, took the lead role in The Full Monty, persuading his very cynical mates to try their hand at some Chippendale-style thrusts.

The movie kicked off a purple patch for the Glaswegian; roles in The Beach (also Danny Boyle), hit television show 24, and 28 Weeks Later followed.

More recently he’s been a regular in US shows Once Upon a Time, playing Rumpelstiltskin and Stargate Universe, which saw him move to Vancouver with his family, which has been his primary base for more than a decade.

He was reluctant to uproot his three children who grew up there, and previously admitted his teenage son considers himself ‘Canadian with a Glasgow accent’.  

In 2017 he starred in the Trainspotting sequel, T2, and he’s set to reprise his role as psychotic hard man Francis Begbie again next year a six-part television spin-off series based on Irvine Welsh’s 2016 book, The Blade Artist. 

Teasing details of the project, Robert revealed that his character starts off the movie having just left HMP Edinburgh, where he served a 25-year prison sentence for his multitude of crimes. 

He has also starred in hit Sky One series Cobra as Robert Sutherland, the Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party.

In his 32-year career on the big and small screen he’s become known for his commitment to authenticity in roles, often losing or gaining weight and changing his lifestyle to fit a character including moving house to live where it is set.

While filming T2, he decided to live in Edinburgh, rather than with his family in Glasgow, because he felt like his violent psychopath character Begbie, was too much ‘in his head’.

‘He’s not the kind of character you want to take home every night,’ he told Time Out London. ‘It takes its toll. You find yourself being short with people. You get a wee bit louder and a wee bit more snappy.’ 

The actor has kept a relatively quiet private life. In 1997, he married make-up artist Anastasia Shirley, with whom he shares a daughter and two sons, and he says his family has kept him grounded throughout his career.

‘I’m a family guy, I like spending time with my wife and my kids. I’ve never ever seen myself as any great shakes,’ he said. 

 MARK ADDY: DAVE 

The portly Dave is perhaps the least keen on disrobing in The Full Monty, but somehow managed to be the most charming of all the Sheffield strippers.

His teacher at RADA once snobbishly typecast him as ‘a semi-idiotic painter and decorator’, but actor Mark Addy, 58, who was already well known for his work on television comedy The Thin Blue Line, built a solid and impresive list of high profile TV roles, in the wake of the Fully Monty. 

‘Every job I’ve had since is a result of that film,’ he said. 

Yet even after The Full Monty became a worldwide hit, Mark still couldn’t believe that Steven Spielberg wanted him to play Fred Flintstone in the 2000 comedy The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas with Joan Collins as his mother-in-law

Thinking they’d sent the script to the wrong person, he turned down the role three times. 

After roles in such films as 2001’s A Knight’s Tale with Heath Ledger, American TV stardom followed from 2002 to 2006 in the CBS sitcom Still Standing, with Mark cast as a burly working man with a slim, pretty wife.

‘It was targeted at the 18- to 39-year-old male viewer with an aspirational message that even overweight guys can get the girl. That’s a popular theme, so no one in Hollywood made me lose weight,’ said Mark.

He found worldwide fame once again starring as Tyrant King Robert Baratheon in the first season of global smash hit Game of Thrones in 2011 – with showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss singing his praises saying he was ‘easiest actor to cast for the show’.

Addy has since become a stalwart of British TV, with roles in Doctor Who, White House Farm and The Salisbury Poisonings in recent years.

He’s been married to Kelly Biggs since 1996 and has three children. They met when she was working in the box office of playwright John Godber’s Hull Truck Theatre Company, and they married in 1996.

STEVE HUISON: LOMPER

Flame-haired Lomper couldn’t have looked less like a Chippendale but was brought into the group after trying to take his own life, fearing decades on the dole following the closure of the steelworks.

Actor Steve Huison, now 59, headed west from Sheffield to the cobbles of Manchester, starring as Eddie Windass in Coronation Street from 2008 to 2011. 

More fleeting television roles have followed in recent years, including stints in UK television dramas Doctors and Scott and Bailey.  

Despite impressive credentials, Huison admits he nearly gave up his acting career, after a bad interaction with a top casting director for a blockbuster film.

Speaking about the director to Great British Life magazine he said: ‘He was lying on a red leather chaise longue and didn’t make eye contact. 

‘I was in the waiting room beforehand and Billy Connolly came out and he was shouting at this bloke and I thought: ‘Wow – he’s even managed to p*** off Billy Connolly’.

He nearly packed it all in, but shortly after his hero British director Ken Loach, cast him in a film called The Navigators. 

A talented artist in more ways that one, Huison also creates portraits for a living and recently had an exhibition at the Pyramid Gallery in York. 

Speaking in 2020, he explained how he   looks for character in the faces of his subjects and invites them to sit for him in the shed at the bottom of his garden.

Born in Leeds, he still lives in Yorkshire, in the fishing village of Robin Hood’s Bay in the Moors with his wife Theresa.

He added to Great British Life:  ‘I moved here knowing absolutely nobody, and I’ve been fascinated at how easy it is to create new networks of friends in such a short space of time’. 

WILLIAM ‘WIM’ SNAPE: NATHAN

Snape won hearts as Nathan, Gaz’s super-cute young son who is less than impressed by his father’s latest money-making idea.

Of all the actors appearing in The Full Monty, Snape looks the most different – because he grew up. Now 36, he’s had a string of acting roles in the likes of Holby City, Emmerdale and Heartbeat. 

Going by the name of ‘Wim’ he’ trained at Royal Central School London and but after the pandemic hit and acting jobs halted, he trained to be counsellor at Manchester College. This year, his theatrical life appears firmly back on track, he’s spent six weeks filming the new CBBC series The Beaker Girls.

And despite a thriving acting career, he revealed in 2017 that he only auditioned for the role because it meant he would get time off school. He told the Daily Star: ‘They said they wanted someone to play the boy in this film called The Full Monty,’

‘About 20 lads put their hands up but I didn’t bother. I wasn’t interested in drama. Then they dropped the bomb: you got six weeks off school. My hand was straight up.’

He now lives in Manchester with his wife Natasha James and their daughter Marla. A regular poster to his Instagram page, the actor and voice over artist has recently shared snaps from the set of The Beaker Girls. 

HUGO SPEER: GUY

The character of Guy can’t dance, but he’s very easy on the eye, and that’s enough for stripping leader Gaz to give him the green light to join.

Speer, now 54, has been ever present on screens since, starring in television dramas Bleak House, Midsomer Murders and The Musketeers. On film, he’s had roles in Vera and the controversial Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1.  

More recently he’s had roles in Netflix series Shadow and Bone, US series London Kills, and ITV smash hit Marcella.

While most of the cast have kept their personal lives out of the press, Speer made headline in 2009 when he was banned from the roads today after he drove home from a friend’s wake while twice the legal drink-drive limit. –

The star drove his BMW into a traffic island after he decided to drive the short distance. He admitted drink-driving when he appeared before magistrates and was disqualified for 18 months and fined £350 with £45 costs and a £15 victim surcharge.

He is married to Glaswegian actress, writer and director Vivienne Harvey who is known for writing episodes of Harlot and Clink. 

LESLEY SHARP: JEAN 

The role of Jean scooped Sharp, now 63, a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress and has seen her become one of the UK’s most recognisable actresses.

Roles in Bob and Rose, Vera Drake, the long-running hit Scott and Bailey and Netflix series Paranoid have kept Sharp’s career firmly on track.

In 2021, she’s been in an impressive four projects, including Netflix fantasy hit Fate: The Winx Saga, Channel 4’s Before We Die and as a narrator on BBC documentary Heaven Made.

In the same year she took the took the lead role in Kae Tempest’s Philoctetes at the National Theatre.

Other projects include her role as DC Margaret Oliver in BBC One’s Three Girls about Rochdale child sex abuse ring and After Life, which one her a Royal Television Society for Best Actress.

She’s married to fellow English actor Nicholas Gleaves and have two sons, the couple live in London.  

PAUL BARBER: HORSE

For many, Paul Barber, now 71, will only ever be Denzil from Only Fools and Horses. But his role as Horse, so-called for rather X-rated reasons, has seen a steady string of roles come his way ever since.

Since his role in the Full Monty, he’s appeared in Death in Paradise and One Night in Istanbul. He’s also proven his chops in Hollywood, starring alongside Samuel L Jackson and Meat Loaf in The 51st State.

Other TV roles have also occurred, including a small part Coronation Street playing a club owner, Nelson, as well as the role of Captain in Sky 1’s Sinbad.

The actor, who resides in Clacton, Essex, also guest-starred in two episodes of the CBBC Tracy Beaker spin-off series The Dumping Ground as a homeless man, George. 

A poignant role for the veteran actor – who himself was placed in care after the death of his mother from tuberculous when he was just seven. 

With no signs of retirement on the horizon for Barber, reprising his role as Horse in The Full Monty Disney Plus series will see the actor back in the spotlight in his early seventies.   

EMILY WOOF: MANDY

Author and actor Emily Woof played Mandy in the 1997 cult classic, in which she starred as the troublesome ex-wife of Gaz. 

Her demands for child support were the catalyst for his decision to form the strip act.

Since the film finished, she has gone on to star as Nancy in the 1999 mini-series Oliver Twist and thief Paula in Daylight Robbery. Emily has also written two novels.

Her last role appears to be in 2015 – where she starred in Inspector George Gently.

She is married to screenwriter Hamish McColl – who is known for his work with Rowan Atkinson having written Mr. Bean’s Holiday and Johnny English Reborn. They have two children.  

DEIRDRE COSTELLO: LINDA

Deirdre Costello played the wife of Gerald, who is fooled into thinking that he still has a job and goes to the office everyday.

Before that, she appeared in the 1980 film The Elephant Man and later went on to have small parts in Doctors and Coronation Street. She’s starred in a few roles since including 12 episodes of Coronation Street in three different roles. 

Born in Elland, Leeds – it’s unclear whether Costello will return to The Full Monty remake to reprise her role.  

Two-time Oscar-nominated actor Tom Wilkinson has died aged 75, his family have announced.

The British film star, best known for playing Gerald Arthur Cooper in the 1997 comedy The Full Monty, died ‘suddenly’ on Saturday. 

He is survived by his actress wife Diana Hardcastle, 74, and their two daughters, Alice and Mollie. 

Wilkinson was awarded a Bafta for best supporting actor in The Full Monty which followed a group of redundant steelworkers from Sheffield who decide to set up an all-male striptease act to earn a living.

Across a glittering career spanning nearly 50 years, Wilkinson also starred in the 1998 romcom Shakespeare in Love, Christopher Nolan’s 2005 blockbuster Batman Begins and 2011 action thriller Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. 

His tragic death was confirmed in a statement shared by his agent on behalf of his family. 

The statement read: ‘It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30. His wife and family were with him. The family asks for privacy at this time.’ 

Wilkinson and his wife tied the knot in 1988 and would go on to play husband and wife in The Kennedys in 2011 and the 2014 film Good People. They had most recently starred alongside one another in the 2020 period drama series Belgravia.

Wilkinson was nominated for six Baftas in total as well as two Oscars for the 2001 drama In The Bedroom, where he played a bereaved father, and Michael Clayton, a 2007 legal thriller starring George Clooney. 

The actor, who had more than 130 film and TV credits, also won a 2009 Golden Globe and 2008 Emmy for his role as American political figure Benjamin Franklin in HBO series John Adams opposite Paul Giamatti. 

He later featured in a star-studded cast alongside his wife, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Penelope Walton and Bill Nighy in the 2011 film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. 

And he most recently reunited with his The Full Monty co-stars, Robert Carlyle and Mark Addy, in a Disney+ series of the same name. 

In the original film, Wilkinson played a former steel mill foreman who was recruited to help the unemployed Sheffield men dance ahead of them performing to a Tom Jones version of You Can Leave Your Hat On.

The film won an Oscar for best original musical or comedy score and was nominated for three others, including best picture and best director. 

He was also known for his roles in a BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit, the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility and the 2014 Wes Anderson comedy drama The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Wilkinson was born to farmers in the Yorkshire valley of Wharfedale in 1948, and grew up in Canada and Cornwall before attending the University of Kent, where he studied English and American literature and developed a passion for acting and directing.

He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in the 1970s and got his first major screen role in the 1986 political drama First Among Equals, where he starred alongside his future wife.

But it was his unforgettable role in The Full Monty that saw Wilkinson shoot to fame in 1997. 

He said ‘pure chance’ helped him to land the role. ‘I was offered the lead in a TV series and the part in a low budget movie,’ he said. ‘I remember phoning a friend and he said, ‘Take the TV, take the TV’.

‘But I didn’t follow his advice and the TV show turned out to be crap. The Full Monty changed my life.’

He would later feature in a string of Hollywood films and dramas that further cemented his status as an acting great.

His credits included The Patriot, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Gathering Storm, Black Knight, Valkyrie, The Lone Ranger and Denial. 

Wilkinson was recognised for his versatility, showcasing his talent across period dramas such as Sense and Sensibility to starring alongside Jackie Chan in Rush Hour.

But off the screen he enjoyed keeping a low profile, previously admitting: ‘I like to go to Waitrose and not be recognised.’ 

In 2005, the late Queen Elizabeth II awarded Wilkinson with an OBE for services to drama.

Actor Aneurin Barnard, who starred opposite Wilkinson in Dead In A Week (Or Your Money Back), said he was ‘very sad’ to hear of his death. 

On X, formerly Twitter, Barnard wrote: ‘I had a very great time getting to know him and working with him. One of our wonderful legends that we say goodbye to. Bye for now Tom x.’ 

Will Young also paid tribute to Wilkinson, describing him as ‘British acting royalty’.

The singer said The Full Monty star Wilkinson came to his aid when he was going for acting auditions.

Young, who has appeared in Mrs Henderson Presents, Marple and Highland Park, wrote on Instagram: ‘Goodbye friend. Funny, bloody smart, helped me with auditions along with (Diana Hardcastle) and what a terrific actor. British acting royalty I salute you dear Tom xxx.’

Actor Michael Warburton said it was ‘very sad news that one of our finest has left us.’

The Strays star added: ‘My first sight of Tom Wilkinson was in 1993 when he played the title role in King Lear at the Royal Court. He was of course magnificent. 

‘I also worked on Stage Door there & he’d often sit down & chat with me & then went on to help me raise funds to go to Drama School. RIP Tom.’

American filmmaker Scott Derrickson also paid tribute to Wilkinson.

Derrickson, known for directing horror films such as Sinister and The Black Phone, recalled a time when the actor gave him a surprise kiss on the lips whilst on the set of The Exorcism Of Emily Rose.

The film director tweeted: ‘When we wrapped The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I went to him to say goodbye.

‘As I went in for a hug, he turned sideways and put one arm around my shoulder.

‘I said, ‘Well that’s a British hug if I’ve ever had one…’

‘He frowned at me, then grabbed my face and kissed me right on the lips for a good five seconds, then declared loudly, ‘Don’t ever insult British affection or sense of romance! We invented the stuff!”

He described Wilkinson as ‘an amazing talent and wonderful human being’.

Monty Don has unveiled his latest project after admitting he doesn’t regret taking his friend’s wife.

The Gardeners’ World star, 68, will share his passion for gardens and the unique role they play in human inspiration and wellbeing at Kew Gardens during an In Conversation event in July.

He joins the previously announced headliners for the summer concert series: MIKA on July 9, Passenger on July 11 and JLS on July 12, as well as Richard Ashcroft who will appear on July 14.

After an exciting sold-out tour in 2022, Monty will be back on tour, where he will share stories from his gardening career, describe his favorite gardens – both ancient and modern, and reveal how he fell in love with the natural world.

Fans can discover how he created his beautiful garden in Longmeadow, what practices he considers most useful and important, and the magical impact of the changing of the seasons.

In a recent interview, Monty Don admitted that he doesn’t feel bad about taking his friend’s wife and that he doesn’t regret it.

Monty fell for his current wife Sarah, 69, while she was already married to a wealthy botanist – at the time hanging out with both her and her husband and even going driving with him.

But when Sarah’s then-husband left for work, she and Monty fell in love and she eventually decided to break up with her husband.

Speaking openly about the ‘complicated’ situation at the Question time about white wine podcast, Monty admitted he had to be ruthless despite his guilt, saying: “I loved it, it was amazing. I’m so happy.’

Monty met Sarah at Cambridge University when he was a penniless student, but after they eventually started dating, they moved to the Yorkshire Moors, where they rented a house together and did odd jobs for their landlord.

He later proposed on a rowboat in Scotland and refused to row back to land until Sarah changed her mind after first saying she wasn’t sure, then secretly booking the wedding for less than a week after returning home – which gave Sarah 48. hours notice period.

But he also said there had been difficult times in their marriage, with Sarah at one point threatening to leave him with their three children because of his depression if he didn’t seek help.

Monty said: “It was obviously complicated. I don’t think it was love at first sight. I think it was an intense attraction at first sight.

“Her husband was someone I rode with and knew very well, and that was the case for about six months of meeting them socially.

‘I remember thinking in a rather banal way, ‘How come she met him before she met me? Why is the person you are strongly attracted to with someone else? Marriage or not.’

‘It never occurred to me that it could be something else. It wasn’t like I was trying to pinch someone else’s wife; there was no question of that.

“And about a year later we crossed paths and her husband was away on a field trip for about four months. He was a botanist.

‘And we started seeing each other some more and we discovered that we really enjoyed spending time together, but in a completely platonically innocent way.

‘And gradually, over several days and weeks, I became aware that I was increasingly regretting the platonic side of things.

‘You know that thing when you’re very attracted to someone, you don’t get too close to him or her, or you don’t dare show too much interest or something like that.

‘It turned out we both felt the same way. But she was married to someone else and so it was very difficult.

‘She decided she definitely didn’t want to have an affair.

“She chose me and it was an extremely difficult, unhappy, tormented situation for about six months because he obviously wasn’t very happy with that arrangement.

“He felt quite reasonably betrayed and very, very, very angry.

“So I don’t want to downplay any of that, but at the same time we both just felt like we had our life partner. We had just met the person we were meant to be with and it was a terrible shame that she was married.

‘She got married at 19, five years before I met her. And it was complicated because her husband only asked her to marry him because he was doing post-doctoral work in Papua New Guinea and was going to be away for three years, and they had been boyfriend and girlfriend, and so it was a way to be together. . At that time there was no question of her going with him unmarried.

“I’m not trying to denigrate their marriage in any way. As far as I can tell it was very happy.

“But the thing was, we hadn’t met and we met. And I felt at first incredibly frustrated and sad that I couldn’t be with the person I wanted to be with, and then incredibly blessed that I could be.

‘I remember cycling across the Yorkshire Moors. And there was a gamekeeper in his house and he said, “They live on the shore, don’t they?” And I said “I’m”, (he said) “with your girl?”, and I said “yeah, yeah, she’s my girl” and I thought this is the best thing I’ve ever felt.

“It’s been that way ever since, really.

‘The thing is, I’ve always felt a little guilty about it, but at the same time there’s a kind of ruthlessness about it. Anything goes in love and war. You can’t walk around. If you decide to be with someone and that means the marriage will break up, you can’t say, “Oh, I feel really bad about this.”

‘No, I don’t. I loved it, it was great. I’m so happy.

“I feel sorry for him, but it happened and I’m very happy it happened. I don’t regret it at all.’

Speaking about Sarah’s decision to marry her first husband because of his desire to go abroad, Monty added: “It would have been very difficult for her to go and not get married, and it was also a way to to get away from home. If you wanted to leave your home and see the wider world, by getting married, all that was allowed.

‘I think anyone who gets married before the age of 25 is considered very young.

“We’ve been together for 44 years, we’ve been married for 40 years, and the only reason we didn’t get married sooner is because it took her two years to finalize her divorce.

‘I would have been married on day one. And then we were in Scotland in the Hebrides, and we were on some remote islands, and I was riding out to sea with her, and the sea was quite calm, and I said, “Will you marry me?” And she said, “I’m not sure.” And I said, “Well, I won’t row back until you do.”

“So we were in the boat and after about a minute or two she said, ‘Oh, okay, okay.’

‘And when we got back to London a few days later, I had the registry office booked for later that week because I thought, ‘I don’t want her to change her mind.’

‘So I then told her we were getting married, I think 48 hours before our due date, because she had agreed but we hadn’t set a date.

‘Then we had to get a ring, and I remember calling a few people to say ‘come with me’. My brother called me and said, “Do you want to have lunch?”

‘I said, “Yes, great, tell me what you’re coming to have lunch with me, and I’ll pay for it, but can you come to my wedding first.”

‘So come to my wedding and we’ll have lunch. And then we both went to work in the morning, we had work to do.

‘We got married at the Finsbury Registry Office and then had lunch at L’Escargot and that was it, we never had a honeymoon.’

He added that despite their close bond, there have been difficult times in his marriage to jeweler Sarah due to financial problems after their joint jewelery business collapsed, and Monty’s depression.

Monty said: ‘Everyone changes, it’s never a bed of roses. Living with someone else will always be demanding on many levels.

‘We have lost everything. There was a moment when Sarah said, “Look, I just can’t stand your mood and your black depression any longer, you have to do something about it, because if you don’t, I can’t live with you, and I can’t anymore with your life.” I’ll take the kids and I’ll go.”

‘”It’s not that I don’t want to live with you, it’s not that I don’t love you, but I just can’t deal with you” and the fact that we were in this horrible rented house, we had no money, I had no work, she had three small children.

“And I did go to a doctor.”

Argyll and the Isles — close to Glasgow — are marketed as Scotland’s ‘adventure coast’, and I recently saw them up close and personal with a folding bike, a bus, and a bunch of ferry tickets.

I was following cycling routes devised by a German guy who so fell in love with Scotland he moved there. Eighteen years later, he now writes books and shoots videos of his adventures showing the world why this part of Scotland is heaven for those who love travel — and gravel. He’s a big fan of the relatively new category of bicycle built for adventure called the gravel bike.

‘A gravel bike is somewhere between a road bike and a mountain bike,’ Markus Stitz told me.

In other words, a gravel bike is good on both dirt and asphalt.

‘You can ride them from your front door. They’ll get you almost anywhere,’ he added.

I rented one for a day at the end of my four-day trip to Argyll and the Isles, but I followed most of the routes Markus suggested on my Brompton. This iconic folding bike was handy for tucking away on public transport.

I arrived in Scotland on the night train from London. It’s always a thrill to wake up in the glorious Highlands after eight hours tucked up in a gently rocking Caledonian Sleeper bed. I opened the blinds to a grey dawn, but through my private little window, I could see the Arrochar ‘Alps’ foothills, mottled with various browns and vivid greens.

Within an hour, I was in Fort William, where I switched to a West Coast Motors coach. This bus trip along the A828 was also scenic and included a cracking view down to the imposing Castle Stalker (not a crime scene, the name is Gaelic for ‘hunter.’)

This medieval tower was ‘Castle Aaargh’ in the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

‘I wave my private parts at your aunties,’ French castle guard John Cleese taunted Graham Chapman as King Arthur, adding: ‘You cheesy lot of second-hand electric donkey-bottom biters.’

Beyond Castle Stalker, just out of sight, was Port Appin’s famous seafood restaurant, which I’d visit three days later.

The borrowed Brompton in the bowels of the bus was the new and pricey titanium version. It’s almost a full kilo lighter than the steel version I use at home. It folds and unfolds the same way as a standard Brompton, and 15 seconds after getting off the bus, I was riding towards the first of several ferries on this car-free island-hopping micro-adventure.

Caledonian MacBrayne — or CalMac — is the UK’s largest ferry operator, running 29 routes to over 50 destinations across 200 miles (322km) of Scotland’s west coast. It has a fleet of 33 vessels, and I’d later have one almost to myself, but there were a few other passengers on the ferry to the Inner Hebridean island of Coll. The crossing — through the Sound of Mull — took a little over two and a half hours.

Landing on treeless Coll, 10 miles (16km) across the Atlantic from Ardnamurchan Point, the westernmost part of the Scottish mainland, I rode uphill to the tiny village of Arinagour, where half of the islanders live. 

I stayed in a comfy private room in the 14-person Coll Bunkhouse next to the island’s surprisingly modern community centre, An Cridhe. Princess Anne opened this in 2012. An Cridhe means ‘the heart’, and the brightly-lit, the multi-purpose building is at the heart of life on Coll, a hub for social gatherings throughout the year. Folks were using the gym, music was coming from a dance class in the hall, and I whiled away some time looking at a diverse selection of local products, from jams to artworks. Payment is via an honesty box.

Coll might only be 13 miles (21km) long by four miles (6.5km) wide, but it has 30 beaches, some with golden white shell-sand, others have resident RSPB-protected Corncrakes. The beaches I visited were deserted. I put my drone in the air, and from above, Hogh Bay’s dunes and emerald green waters appeared positively Caribbean. Looks can be deceiving: I was glad to be wearing a warm fleece and a waterproof.

Fighting against a stiff breeze, I rode over to the dour Breachacha Castle, a 15th-century tower house standing guard over a sandy cove. 

The mansion next door — a 1750s replacement for the draughty tower — is where essayist and dictionary author Dr. Johnson and his biographer James Boswell stayed when stranded during a Highland tour in 1773. 

Johnson first described the mansion as a ‘neat, new-built gentleman’s house’ but when later driven from the island by its fierce weather, he revised his description of the house to it being a ‘tradesman’s box’ and, digging the knife deeper, sniffed that being on Coll was a ‘waste of life’. (Johnson had a high bar for what tickled his fancy. His most famous quote is – ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life’.)

What the island misses on the entertainment angle, it makes up for it on the gawping-at-the-Milky-Way front. Coll is the only Scottish island to have been awarded International Dark Sky Community status by the International Dark-Sky Association, one of only 22 worldwide locations to be similarly selected. 

This designation, granted in 2013, resulted from work by a small group of astronomy-minded locals.

Coll’s lack of light pollution is noteworthy, and there are two other key omissions — there’s no petrol station on the island and, unlike so much of Scotland’s West coast, there are precious few midges (the pesky bugs are no doubt grounded by the wind).

I had a cooked breakfast in Island Cafe (there’s also a pub on Coll). When the young man asked for my order, I stated I’d like the ‘full English’ even though the menu clearly said the hearty choice was a ‘full Scottish.’ I sank into my chair, blushing with shame.

Later in the day, I left on the ferry back to the mainland and hopped on a smaller ferry to the island of Lismore, north of Oban. Aside from the crew, I had the 12-car ferry to myself.

Lismore is 10 miles (16km) long, and one mile (1.6km) wide. It has one minor road and several gravel tracks.

Landing at Achnacroish I turned right on the narrow tarmac road towards Port Ramsay but diverted through a gated farmer’s field to climb the grassy, sheep-poo-strewn slope to the ruined Tirefour Castle, an Iron Age fortified tower or broch. Perched on a cliff edge overlooking the Lynn of Lorn, this broch has views over to Ben Nevis to the north and the Paps of Jura to the south.

Somewhere along the way, I’d picked up a sharp as my front tyre had developed a slow puncture, but I had a rendezvous to make so, instead of fixing the flat, I legged it to Port Ramsay, inflating the tyre several times as it softened.

Across the water in Port Appin I knew that Markus was on his way over with his girlfriend Louise and their gravel bikes on the smallest ferry of the trip, a council-operated service that takes ten minutes, just enough time to fix my puncture.

Markus was keen to show me the gravel bike ride on the island, part of the Wild About Argyll’s bike-packing trail, a round-the-islands route he devised and which the local marketing board promotes. Dodging rain showers, we rode on dirt down to the deserted village of Salen, abandoned in the 1930s. In the 19th century, this was a busy port shipping lime for fertiliser from adjacent quarries. The derelict lime kilns are impressive but offer little shelter from the rain.

Soggy, we headed back to Port Ramsay and took the short ferry back across to Port Appin for lunch in the Pierhouse Hotel‘s seafood restaurant by the shore of Loch Linnhe. We were too late for one of the restaurant’s famous £160 platters (lobster, langoustine, scallops, oyster, house-smoked salmon, kipper rillettes, and mussels), but we were glad of some delicious Cullen skink haddock soup served with oat and treacle soda bread.

I left Markus and his girlfriend at the hotel and hooked up with the Caledonia Way cycle trail, a former railway line that ran from Connel to the slate quarries near Ballachulish. It was my traffic-free route back to Oban to stay at the Whisky Vaults hotel, where guests qualify for a wee dram in the whisky bar.

The next day, stashing the Brompton and renting a gravel bike from the Rusty Cycle Shed in Oban, I rode the Maelstrom loop, a short circular gravel ride picked from Markus’s new book, Great British Gravel Rides. Returning the rental, I had plenty of time to make the Highland Explorer, a bicycle-friendly service between Oban and Glasgow.

This service is so cyclist-friendly that it can accommodate any size, shape, or weight of cycle — just so long as you can heave it on board (the staff aren’t allowed to help). My featherweight Brompton was no bother.

I didn’t need it, but this train car has a power socket to charge an electric bike as you gawp out of the windows at the rolling scenery beside Loch Long and Loch Lomond.

The bike car is the third portion of a three-car service. The Highland Explorer stops at stations along the West Highland line. It isn’t a fast train — the 97-mile journey takes a little over three hours — but as this is one of the world’s most scenic train journeys, that’s hardly a problem, for tourists at least.

The Highland Explorer started in July 2021, and a ticket costs more than on one of the unbranded, same-line services that run between Glasgow and Oban but which don’t have space for 20 cycles. 

The spruced-up carriage has room for 24 passengers who can spy their bikes at all times. Cyclists with bike reservations get first dibs on these seats, which, depending on staff availability, benefit from complimentary at-seat refreshments.

In effect, this is a first-class service. Passengers without bikes have to pay a £10 supplement to sit in the snazzy seats, which can lead to murmurings because the carriage isn’t flagged as first-class.

Converted from a British Rail Class 153 Super Sprinter diesel train built in the early 1990s, the Highland Explorer’s refresh included a colourful exterior designed by Scottish artist Peter McDermott. 

This vinyl wrap features cyclists, Highland cattle, and landmarks such as the Glenfinnan ‘Harry Potter’ viaduct and the Skye Cuillin mountain range.

The Highland Explorer runs twice daily to and from Scotland’s ‘adventure coast’ – but is a joyful adventure in its own right. 

Follow Carlton on Twitter – twitter.com/carltonreid.