In the last few weeks I’ve been making a series in the Philippines for 5 and ITN. At the same time as I was swimming about on the beautiful island of Palawan, I was also in a care home near Manchester explaining to my son (Pearce Quigley ) what humunculi are.

I’m never quite sure if I’m an actor who travels, or a traveller who acts, but when they both happen at the same time I realise that the two aren’t that different. Both acting and travelling are about observation, about learning something you didn’t know before. So, at the age of 82 (going on 83) I’ve learnt how to grow humunculi and how to swim with sardines.

Now I‘m back home, I’ve temporarily given up acting and travelling and taken up authoring, writing a book about the Philippines and doing publicity for the delayed (but very beautiful) In Nigeria book which is published on May 28th. And I still keep a diary.

It’s easy not to do all these things. To let other people do them for you, but I’ve always been arrogant enough to think there’s something I can do which no-one else can. In Mackenzie Crooke’s care home everyone was asleep except for Brian who was busy making extraordinary marble runs.

See what I mean.

Small Prophets is the first ‘serious’ acting I’ve done since playing The Green Man in Worzel Gummidge. That lovely warm, rural series was written by Mackenzie Crook. I enjoyed working with him so much that when, six years later, he offered me the part of Brian Sleep in Small Prophets, I didn’t hesitate. Though I had travelling to do in Venezuela and a book to write on my return, by a stroke of luck, my Venezuela work was over at almost precisely the time when Small Prophets was to be shot. In May last year, I took a train up to Manchester for a read-through and in a high-ceilinged strikingly modern room which bore Victoria Wood’s name I first became Brian and met my screen son, Michael, played by Pearce Quigley.

Some read-throughs simply show how much work still needs to be done. Not Small Prophets. From the moment we first opened our scripts and read it through we knew that Mackenzie’s script and choice of actors melded together perfectly.

And so it was during the filming. The scenes came naturally to life and Mackenzie’s quiet authority made sure the humour, the emotion and the magic were perfectly balanced.

And now the response since the series aired seems to be proving that making good television doesn’t need tantrums or tearing your hair out. Getting it right doesn’t have to be agonising. If the foundations are right it just works.

For me Small Prophets was a delight to be involved in. I’m delighted that the viewers seem to think so too.

Watch all episodes now on iPlayer.

There are those whose impact on your life is in inverse proportion to the amount of time you spent with them. I felt that most poignantly this week as I heard news of the deaths of Nigel Walters and Tom Stoppard.

I spent 40 days with Nigel Walters, as he filmed me on the second leg of Around The World In Eighty Days back in 1988. We made our way together across the Pacific, on the train from Los Angeles to New York and across the Atlantic, holding our breath as the eighty days began to run out.

Throughout it all Nigel was wonderful company. A Welshman with a wry, mischievous sense of humour, he was keen to do his job at all times, indeed he and I were once caught shooting a sequence of myself on a heaving deck in the middle of the Pacific, only hours after the director had expressly forbidden any more shots of water.

Despite a serious hangover he shot the triumphant return home and shared all our disappointment at not being allowed into the Reform Club.

We didn’t work together again, but there was never a question of our not remaining friends. He was warm and passionate about his work and his friendships and he will always remain indelible in my memory as the man who brought me home.

I first met Tom Stoppard in May 1975 after I had been offered the part of Harris in a BBC revival of Three Men In A Boat to be directed by Stephen Frears. We drank afternoon tea at the Waldorf Hotel in the Aldwych as elderly couples took to the dance floor. In marked contrast to Stephen, who was agonising over the rest of the casting, Tom was relaxed and easy going. He felt that when it all boiled down to it filming was about getting together a group of people you like, and he quoted Evelyn Waugh ‘The Second World War wasn’t bad, provided you were with nice people’ And being with Tom was not only very nice but I learnt a lot from him about how to enjoy work.

As with Nigel Walters we never worked together again, but whenever we met up it was always special.

Two boat people gone. But if I ever get to cross the River Styx myself I would want Nigel filming and Tom comforting me with one of his King-Size cigarettes.

I’ve completed most of the dates on my Venezuela book tour which took me from Tynemouth in Northumberland to Yeovil in Somerset. That’s the dual satisfaction of these series - by going abroad I get to see more of my own country. Thank you to all those who turned out to see the show and join me in my ramblings.

What added a touch of excitement and immediacy to this particular tour was that Venezuela, which we chose to go to because so little was known about it, is suddenly back in the headlines. As ever, Donald Trump and his administration are at the centre of it.

American airborne rockets have sunk a number of boats off the coast of Venezuela, claiming nearly fifty lives without providing any clear evidence for what these boats were carrying and where they were going to.

We just have to assume what we are told. That these were bad people attempting to destroy America with drugs, who deserved not just to be disabled, or even arrested and put on trial, but blown apart and sent to the bottom of the sea.

Things are moving fast. Trump has authorised a covert CIA operation in Venezuela. The US navy has moved its biggest aircraft carrier into the region. A force of 10,000 has been assembled.

President Maduro, with the Americans in his gunsights, is ramping up his own defences, tightening his grip on the country.

The Venezuelan people are stuck in the middle of this stand-off, threatened from the inside and the outside. The people of this stunningly beautiful country have put up with a lot over these last years. They deserve a break, not a war.

News of the death of Connie Francis this week brought back some poignant teenage memories. I was 15 when 'Who’s Sorry Now' was released and I found her strident, plaintive delivery very sexy. With that strong distinctive voice she produced a string of hits which only cemented my great love for her. That was until I discovered Bobby Darin, whose 'Dream Lover’ produced a similar state of doting admiration.

I grew out of Connie, I suppose, 'Stupid Cupid' being no match for Darin’s smooth delivery of classics like 'Beyond The Sea’. But I felt a pang of guilt for so lightly transferring my loyalties.

Imagine then my stunned surprise when years later I heard that Connie and Bobby were dating. My two heroes were an item! From out of nowhere the conflicted feelings of my teenage years arose again. I thought it through, got rid of pangs of jealousy, and decided I was very happy for them.

Which is how I was feeling until I read in Connie Francis obituary that Connie’s father, on hearing of their plans to wed, broke into the studio with a loaded gun and ordered Darin to stay away from his daughter.

And that was that. Bobby died at the age of 37. Connie, just a day or two ago, at the age of 87, having been married four times. Three of which lasted less than a year.

But both made music that raised my spirits.

RIP