‘As an actor you are the last link in a very long chain’

While his character has been sitting about contemplating condensation, however, Kennedy himself has been springing up on screens around the world this year – while still managing to fit a trip to Edinburgh in to celebrate his parents’ diamond wedding anniversary in July.

He was a guest star in Combat Hospital, about field medics in Afghanistan, which is broadcast on ABC Television in the United States. “I play a Scottish mechanical engineer in the army who saves the main guy’s life,” he explains. “It was enormous fun and I absolutely loved it.”

And he also appeared in Red Faction Origins for the SyFy Channel, a series set on Mars in the year 2145. Kennedy plays Corvallis, one of the Marauder tribe. “My costume was three big blankets and a tea cosy. We filmed in Bulgaria - it was the middle of February and about -9C. It’s a little bit of a lottery when you get cast, if it had been somewhere 40C I would have had the worst costume but, as it was, I had the best.”

As a huge fan of American television, Kennedy says he would leap at the chance to do more Stateside. “Definitely. I would love it. I’m a big Americophile and I think they do some of the best television in the world.”

But while a call from a Hollywood studio would be a no-brainer, making a choice between acting and producing would be harder.

“I love acting because it was what I have always done and if someone gave me the choice I probably would want acting. Producing is an awful lot more work and less rewarding, at least financially.

“But after six months being an actor, I have an urge to get under the car bonnet and get involved with the nuts and bolts again. I love being an actor but you are the last link in a very long chain that’s probably been going for years.”

Rather like the Very Old Pretenders then.

n The Very Old Pretenders begins on Radio 4 at 11pm on Thursday, September 15