CREATURE comforts

SAMUEL WEST on the joys of playing vet Siegfried Farnon

- 

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL

Samuel West has been a familiar face on our screens for 50 years. Making his debut at the age of nine portraying a young Prince Albert Victor in ITV's 1975 historical epic Edward the Seventh, his breakthrough came with a BAFTA-nominated performance as the idealistic insurance clerk Leonard Bast in the 1992 film adaptation of EM Forster's classic novel Howards End.

For the past five years, Samuel - son of fellow actors Prunella Scales and the late Timothy West - has earned a new legion of fans playing the curmudgeonly but caring vet Siegfried Farnon in 5's hit period piece All Creatures Great and Small.

Here, in a TV Times exclusive, the charming 59-year-old talks about why he treasures his time in the fictional Yorkshire Dales village of Darrowby... Siegfried has been a mess in this sixth series. We've seen how he is hopeless without Skeldale House's housekeeper Mrs Hall, played by Anna Madeley. He fears being abandoned, and his behaviour pushes people away as his spikiness comes out.

He also doesn't like admitting he's unable to cope, although he and Mrs Hall are being more honest with each other.