Let me spill the beans about super Grasse...

MY childhood haunt was the south of France, around the town of Grasse where they make the perfume.

There was a little hilltop village called Cabris where my dad would rent a villa and the whole family would descend.

I’m one of four kids, so there was normally at least six of us.

My two brothers, my sister and I seemed to just spend our time sitting round the pool taking the mick out of each other.

Looking south you could see as far as Cannes and you’d hear the church bells ringing in all the other little villages.

They never rang at the same time, so you used to get the echoes of them at different times.

If there is one holiday time that really sticks in my head, though, it’s when my older brother, Ross and I, spent a week walking the West Highland Way with a couple of mates.

My extended family all still live in Bearsden, which is obviously close by the starting point in Milngavie, and one of the group had to quit halfway and go back and stay with them.

And even before that one of my uncles had to meet me at Balloch to bring me a pair of lightweight trainers as my new walking boots, which I hadn’t broken in, had left my feet covered in blisters.

But for April, we really lucked out with the weather, and camping out each night in such gorgeous countryside was just spectacular.

When we got to Rannoch Moor it was getting quite late in the day.

It was so quiet all we could hear was the faint echo of a cuckoo every now and again.

Oxford is obviously a major tourist city but there’s a whole side you never really see if you live here.

Like many people, I don’t tend to visit where I stay.

There are probably 100 colleges and most you can just walk into most of them, which visitors do.

But I haven’t seen more than half a dozen.