‘We’re very happy. She’s a beauty and by the purest chance she’s an expert angler’
on to such success. They talk of him as a possible James Bond. He’d be fabulous in the role – and I think he should give me a part in it, too.”
As an associate producer on Grantchester, back in January for its fifth series, Robson was allowed a say (his words) in choosing James’s replacement.
“We saw a succession of handsome sixfooters and I chemistry-read, as it’s called, with each of them,” he explains. So what made actor Tom Brittney, as new vicar Will Davenport, the tallest poppy?
“It’s hard to say but he was just right. We connected from the off. If I’m honest, I think the execs and the broadcasters were a little apprehensive. They needn’t have been. He’s brought a different energy to the show.”
No reason, then, why we shouldn’t be chatting, say, in five years from now with Robson and the rest having just completed the tenth series.
“No reason at all. It’s massive in America, huge in Australia, New Zealand and China. “I was recently on a glacier in Alaska, as you are, waiting for a sledge and some huskies. It arrived and a bunch of Americans disembarked. I heard one of them say, ‘Oh my God, it’s the Grantchester guy!’ And then I had to pose for selfies. Unbelievable.” Back home, Robson has a rented property down south and a cottage in Hexham in Northumberland, on the North Tyne, “one of the best salmon fishing rivers in Britain”.
His live-in partner, Zoila, is a Filipina model in her mid-40s. They met four years ago at a gym in Newcastle.
At that stage, she was married to a local vicar, the father of her two children. “We’re very happy. She’s a beauty and, by purest chance, an expert angler,” he says. Robson has a son, 19-yearold Taylor, by his second wife, former Page 3 model Vanya Seager. The couple divorced in 2013 after 12 years of marriage. His first marriage to occupational therapist Alison Ogilvie also ended in divorce after eight years in 1999. Taylor is now at Exeter University studying classical studies.
“He’s a brilliant athlete, a superb hockey player and he gets his good looks from his mother,” says Robson.
“I saw him in a school production. He certainly didn’t lack confidence so who knows what he’ll end up doing?
“Vanya and I have a very civilised relationship. Taylor lives with her but he and I meet when and where we can.”
So what’s Robson up to this Christmas? “Zoila and I will be casting a line for some of the best brown trout in the world on the Diamond River in the Glenorchy Valley on the South Island in New Zealand.” No need to ask if life treating him well.
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