Dan Aykroyd

My idea for 'BoneMan's Daughters' came from the loss of my own daughter when she left home to live with a monster at age 18. I wanted to throttle the man, but she was in love, so all I could do was hope, pray and cry.

My grandma actually put me in girdles when I was around nine or ten because I had hips even then, and she didn't want boys to be attracted to me. Having hips meant you were a full-grown woman, and I was too young for that.

For a boy of ten, used to the coal bings and rust-coloured burns of Cowdenbeath, the fields and woodland of Kingswood, with its overgrown but stately avenue of copper-barked sequoias, felt like a local version of paradise.