John Michie remembers classes in Kenya and paying his way on a cargo ship

Add to My Stories Share This photo was taken in 1965 in the garden of what was then my family home in Kenya. I was nine years old and about to leave for boarding school in Britain. I was born in Burma, but my dads job as a banker took us to Kenya when I was three. My first memories are of Mrs McCullochs Nursery School in Eldoret, west Kenya. The weather was great, so classes were held on the veranda it was idyllic. There was a range of ethnicities at the school.
At that time, we mostly mixed with white Europeans, but thankfully that has changed now. This picture shows me five or six years after that. Im wearing the uniform of my new school, Windlesham House, in Sussex.

John Michie, 54, DI Ross in Taggart, has just joined Coronation Street as Rovers owner Karl. He lives in London with partner Carol and their three children.My parents chose it partly because it is near Gatwick Airport, so I could easily go home to Kenya in the holidays. My first impression of Britain was surprise at how many white people there were, and confusion about why black people didnt speak Swahili.

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I remember trying to talk to a porter at the train station in Swahili and he looked at me as if I were mad. I was also shocked at how cramped Britain seemed after the openness of Africa, and it just seemed so grey compared with Kenya. Winters were particularly hard and I got pretty homesick.
Overall, though, I enjoyed Windlesham. Both my sisters and I were sent to school abroad it was normal for us. I was on the Windlesham swimming team with future Olympian Duncan Goodhew. I also! played for the rugby First XV.

John still has fond memories of KenyaMy love of swimming began in Kenya at the local pool at the Rift Valley Club, where we used to hang out. Windlesham was run by headmaster Charles Malden and his wife Elizabeth-Ann, who were both pretty enlightened. During my time there, they got rid of the school uniform and corporal punishment in this case, the cane and the school became co-ed.
The philosophy they promoted definitely shaped my views on life. The school had a very liberal community spirit. There were lots of kids from all over the world and we were like one big happy family out on the Downs. The irony is that I got my sense of fairness from this private school, which then led to my support of the comprehensive system and all-inclusive education.
I left Windlesham at 13 for school in Perthshire, Scotland, where I got into hill walking, which I still do today. All the moving around when I was young really made me love travelling. After finishing my schooling in Perthshire, I wanted to go to Australia but I had no money so I paid my way by working on a cargo ship.
Ive been back to Kenya with my work over the years. In fact, my first acting job was at a Nairobi theatre in 1980. I still have friends in Kenya and my brother-inlaws parents live there. I even had a text the other day from Tony Fitzjohn [the Kenya conservationist who John played in the film To Walk With Lions in 1999, opposite Richard Harris]. I keep abreast of whats going on there and would like to go back soon.John Michie sponsors a child through childrens charity Plan UK. For more information, visit www.plan-uk.org