I am quite happy staying at home, but every now and again my family gang up on me and say, “Isn’t it about time we went somewhere with a bit more sun?” Then I have to book somewhere ridiculously expensive — because Phyllis and I are both actors, it’s always last-minute.

The past 25 years have been given to family holidays — and we’ve had some lovely ones in Tunisia and on Rhodes. I don’t mind the odd day on the beach when I’m on holiday, but I get bored quickly and start trying to drag everyone to a monastery on a hill or a place around the corner where they press apples. I’d like to take my wife around the vineyards of France when my younger son is a bit older.

I love mixing work and holiday. I spent three years filming Pirates of the Caribbean and managed to take some wonderful holidays around St Vincent and Barbados. One of the highlights was a boat trip we did in the shallow waters off Union Island in 2005. The water was as clear and as warm as bathwater, and the sky and the sea were completely blue. We were in the bowl of an ancient, sunken volcano surrounded by mountains — it was otherworldly, stunning and completely silent. You got the feeling you might fall into the universe. I almost felt agoraphobic.

Travelling for work, I was always flown out first class, with a flat bed, and now the idea of sitting upright on a long-haul flight is horrendous. So when I go on holiday, I either treat myself to business class or I’m crammed in economy with my family, peering around the curtain, wondering what wines are being served in first class and feeling hard done-by.

My hols: Willie Walsh

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My Hols: Anastacia

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• Frequent flyer: Erin O'Connor

BACKGROUND

• My hols: Phil Daniels

• My hols: Roger Moore

• My hols: David Mitchell

• My hols: Tracey Emin

• My hols: Colin Firth

BACKGROUND

• My hols: Ricky Gervais

• My hols: Sam Robards

• My hols: Jimmy Carr

• My hols: Johnny Vegas

• My hols: Moby

As a child, I used to go on holiday to Weston-super-Mare, Burnham-on-Sea and Brean. My mum, dad and I would stay in a caravan, and my cousins lived nearby so I’d spend all day playing with them. On one occasion, when I was nine, I got thrown out of an amusement arcade and chased home by a policeman. The reason was that we’d found a way of making lots of money. We’d buy candyfloss, eat it all and then use the stick to put into the shuffle machines — the ones that have a shelf full of pennies shuffling backwards and forwards. Using the stick, we could knock 50 or 60 pennies off at a time — which was a lot of money in those days. But we got caught and banished, and I spent the rest of the holiday in terror. I didn’t go back until I was 36.

In 1969, when I was 13, I went on my first holiday without my parents. Two friends and I went to Rhos-on-Sea in North Wales, with the sole intention of looking for girls. We were determined to have a snog, but instead we got into three undignified fights on the seafront, and it quickly dawned on us that all the girls were already out with their boyfriends.

When we failed to find girls, we tried to find drinking establishments that would take us. When that failed, we got a bottle of cider and drank it on the beach. It was pretty bleak, really. Even our B&B was bleak. For breakfast we were allowed either a bowl of cornflakes or a glass of orange juice, then an egg.

Luckily, I haven’t had any serious holiday disasters, but I did have a scary experience when I was in Eilat, Israel. I was driving through the desert with a friend. We wound through bushes and over scrubland until we were stopped by a man in a military uniform with a rifle. He asked us what we were doing and if we knew where we were. We said Israel, but apparently it wasn’t.

We’d strayed into Egypt and we were on a military air base. He gave us three minutes to leave before he started shooting. I was going to point out that he should look after his perimeter fences better, as they were obviously down, but he didn’t look like he would have appreciated it. We were in one of those so-called off-road vehicles, but if you go off road with them in the desert, the wheels bed down into the sand. As we were making our exit, we got stuck, but luckily a truck drove past and helped to pull us out. Eventually, we got back in one piece.

Kevin R McNally talked to Harriet Perry

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