One of my great influences was Don Knotts as Barney Fife.

I want to do something for Kirkcaldy and Fife. I am a full-time MP, not a businessman.

From there I did a one year theatre acting course in Fife, and then three years of drama school in London.

The more excited the rooster gets, the higher his voice goes. He's got a little bit of a Barney Fife quality to him.

'The Asylum Dance' was written after I'd moved back to Scotland and was a response to moving to my old home area of Fife.

I grew up Dalgety Bay, in the Kingdom of Fife, in a 1970s bungalow. We moved there when I was nine and stayed for about six years.

Growing up in Fife, you were aware that there were these creatures called lesbians, but it was in the realms of complete freakishness. And I didn't feel like a freak.

I play the baritone horn - which is like a mini tuba, and is the least sexy instrument you can choose, and I generally say I don't play one so I don't have to acknowledge it. I also play fife.

When I was ten years old, my family left a cold, damp prefab in West Fife and moved to Corby, Northamptonshire, where my father quickly found work at what was then the Stewarts & Lloyds steelworks.

Other prime ministers leave office and stay in London. I have come back with my whole family to Fife. This is where they are being brought up. It is better for them and better for me. It's great to see more of the kids.

Snow isn't just pretty. It also cleanses our world and our senses, not just of the soot and grime of a Fife mining town but also of a kind of weary familiarity, a taken-for-granted quality to which our eyes are all too susceptible.

The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks.

Im afraid that when it comes to the Christian life, and especially the issue of assurance, too many of us adopt the Barney Fife approach. That is, we let the enemy bully us into believing that were only safe as long as were wearing our Christian 'uniform.'

Cinema dominated the Fife coalfield towns. We lived in Lochgelly, but my mum was caught up in Hollywood. She was in love with the style and glamour. Sometimes she would come with me to the cinema in the afternoons, and she would say things like, 'I wouldn't mind a peck with Gregory.'

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