"I hope I didn't say too much." - "You said what needed to be said."
no one cares for Audrey Hall more than Siegfried Farnon, and no one understands Siegfried Farnon better than Audrey Hall
"I hope I didn't say too much." - "You said what needed to be said."
no one cares for Audrey Hall more than Siegfried Farnon, and no one understands Siegfried Farnon better than Audrey Hall
This really lovely interview just popped up from Sam West. If I didn't think I could love him anymore this article opens explaining he came into the interview zoom meeting with his D&D name on....like imagine playing D&D with Sam West. I think I'd burst with excitement. Also interesting that his new birding show was filmed around the time his Ma died and that the BBC offered a pilot for the 2020 ACGAS whereas C5 offered the series.
Edit: See the article below the cut
After the success of All Creatures Great and Small, Samuel West is starring in a new Channel 5 factual series, Sam & Ade Go Birding
Published 11 April 2026 7:00am BST - Benji Wilson
When Samuel West logs on to our Zoom call, the name that pops up on screen is âDr Tycho Toftâ. Initially, thereâs no picture, just that strange handle, so I am forced to ask who exactly has arrived sounding like a character from Gormenghast.
âSorry! I came on with my Dungeons & Dragons name,â he says, switching it quickly to Samuel West.
What is a 59-year-old eminent Shakespearean, a star of stage and screen as well as the fourth generation of one of Britainâs most august acting families, doing playing Dungeons & Dragons, I ask? But West is much more interested in the picture on the wall behind me.
âIs that a peregrine?â he says, peeking over his glasses and leaning close to the camera. âIt is! It is!â And then he is off.
âI went out for goshawks last week and I saw three, maybe four,â he says, âbut I was by myself. And I realised that I just want to be with somebody else, now, when Iâm birding. I texted my partner [the playwright Laura Wade] and said, âIâm watching goshawks and I wish you were here.ââ West has decided that twitching, a long-time obsession, loves company. âItâs like sex and juggling: itâs more than twice as much fun with two people.â
It was a discovery he made thanks to filming a new Channel 5 series, Sam & Ade Go Birding. The âAdeâ in the title is Adrian Edmondson, the former Young Ones star, but it is West who leads the expeditions and who got the show under steam.
West and co-star Adrian Edmondson pictured in west Cornwall to promote their new birdwatching series Credit: Channel 5/Frank Films
When we speak, he is in digs near Harrogate, filming a seventh series of All Creatures Great and Small. The remake of the Eighties classic has been, by any measure, a stunning success â he notes with great pride that the original BBC All Creatures ran for seven series, whereas his version has just had an eighth commissioned. It is this success that has given him the clout at Channel 5 to ask if he might be indulged: âI thought after Iâd been playing the same part for five years on Channel 5, âI wonder whether they might let me talk about birds in some way.ââ
West has a curious mind and broad tastes â he is wearing an AFC Wimbledon T-shirt, talks about stamp collecting, identifying birdsong by ear, the demise of interesting locomotives and a childhood fascination with what countries call themselves in their own language. He likes people who âlean forward into the world, as I doâ.
It makes him the perfect man to front films about birding, his âmain hobbyâ. âThey asked who would be at the top of [my] list to come with me. And I said, âWell, Adrian, because heâs quite into birds and heâs lovely and heâs a friend. He said yes. So we did it.â
The series is obviously influenced by the success of BBC Twoâs Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, a hymn to companionship and the joys of standing and staring that has attracted more than two million viewers. But Birding is notably darker. Episode two was filmed in November last year, a week after Westâs mother, the actress Prunella Scales, died. I ask him why he chose to go ahead nonetheless.
âIt wasnât entirely unexpected, so I just thought, âNo, letâs do itâ. It wasnât exactly The Show Must Go On, though she absolutely believed that. I mean, men are quite bad at talking about their feelings, but I donât think we should be frightened of them. It [his motherâs death] is not something Iâm against discussing. It just sort of led that way when we were filming, and itâs very easy to talk to Ade about these sorts of things.â
Scales had dementia for 20 years by the time of her death. In Birding, West also meditates on the loss of his father, the actor Timothy West, who had died just the year before.
âWhen two such big trees fall on your horizon, you can see much further,â he says, âbut everything looks different, and youâre not quite sure how it looks different. You have to get out there and find out.â
In an interview given when he was playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night at the RSC in 2024, West said that he didnât really know who he was without his parents. He ended the conversation with, âI suppose Iâm about to find outâ.
âThat might have been a slightly w---y thing to say,â he says now, âbut I think itâs probably true. Because I went into the profession; because Iâm the fourth generation of actors in my family, and because I, entirely, without thinking about it, have referred so many of the decisions of my life back to them. I think you do find out who you are when theyâve gone.â
While filming the third programme, set in Somerset, âI thought I understood what not seeing them ever again meant. And then I discovered that I didnât. It was really hard. And I thought, âIâd give anything for an hour with them now.ââ
In her last years, Scales would forget who her son was. âShe said to me once, âWhere do you live?â I said, âIslingtonâ. And she said, âOh, thatâs where my son livesâ. I said, âThatâs who I amâ. And she looked up at me and asked, âHow did you get so big?ââ At first it was upsetting. âBut it was clear that I was available to her in many different ages. I was seven some of the time and blond, and she kept sort of touching my hair, which is now dark and receding, but used to be fair and straight and wondered where this seven-year-old had gone. And sometimes she was in her mid-50s, late 50s, like I am now, and I was about 23. And I thought this was really odd.â
West says he used this experience after his father died as a way of coping with his grief. âI thought, âHe is now available to me in all the ages I remember him. He is simultaneously available to me as the man who took me fishing when I was eight, and the man who took me to university when I was 20, and the man who came to see my first show, and the man who used to give me notes when I was at the RSC the first time.â Thatâs all my mum was doing, really. Except I was still alive. It made sense of my mumâs dementia in a way that was less confusing.â
Scales died peacefully at home in London on October 27, 2025, aged 93. It was a day after what would have been her and Timothy Westâs 62nd wedding anniversary. âIt was only the first one theyâd spent apart,â West says. âAnd 61 years of marriage is not to be sniffed at. I mean, Iâm not married, but even if I had been, Iâd never get anywhere near that.â
He says he is planning a memorial in July. âWeâre trying to hold it in Chelsea, which is, if you can imagine, where she lived as a young actor when you still could â when it wasnât the most expensive borough in Britain. I hope it will be as joyous a celebration as my fatherâs one, which we held 10 months after he died. But that will, I suppose, draw a line under it.â
West has been with Wade, best known for her 2018 play Home, Iâm Darling, for years. They live in north London with their two daughters, eight and 11, and go birding together as a family. It is all very wholesome, but still tinged with Westâs keen-eyed drive. âWhen I met Laura, she didnât have any flat shoes!â he says. âNow, Laura and I will wait for three hours to see a bird if we havenât got it on our list.â
Surely the children get bored, like all children do? âThey wouldnât sit for hours, but they have got a fair bit of knowledge. I set the bar reasonably high. They know that if they confuse a moorhen with a coot, Iâll sell themâŠâ He would prefer not to talk directly about his children â he doesnât on the programme â although you sense that if they wanted to join the family business, neither he nor his partner would stand in their way.
âWhen I met Laura, she didnât have any flat shoes!â West and his partner, playwright Laura Wade, now go birding with their children Credit: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images
Born in 1966, West is the grandson of the actor Lockwood West. He has a younger brother, Joe, who works as a teacher and translator, and a half-sister Juliet (from his fatherâs first marriage to the Eurovision Song Contest winner Jacqueline Boyer) who is a make-up artist. The Wests lived in Wandsworth Common in south-west London and he went to Alleynâs school. âIt did one thing really well, which was it taught everybody that enthusiasm was cool. My parents taught me that as well â thatâs probably my greatest inheritance.â
After Oxford, where he studied English, West was about to start at drama school when he was cast in the BBCâs 1989 adaptation of CS Lewisâs The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He has worked in theatre and television ever since. Is he happy with the job of actor? âI think in some ways it would have been better to try and do things a bit more differently,â he says. âI donât think I ever would have done anything outside the arts, but I modelled an enormous amount of my life on the stuff that I learnt from my parents and thinking, âWell, if Iâm ever half as good as you, Iâll be all right, Iâll be happy.â"
The problem has been that the career they pursued has now been dismantled. âI grew up in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties watching them play these big classical roles in classical touring companies all over the world. And I thought thatâs what an actor could be, maybe even should be. But Iâd educated myself into a job that didnât exist any more, because if I think âI ought to be a classical touring actor,â I canât. Nobody does it now. So Iâve sort of turned myself into somebody that I thought my parents would quite like.â
If West is a classically trained Shakespearean lacking those classical roles to play, he hasnât done badly. He appears on Birding bedecked in thousands of pounds of top-end equipment. He is a regular as Peter Judd, a relations consultant and retired Conservative politician in Slow Horses, one of the best shows on television, and his Siegfried Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small is acclaimed and beloved.
Siegfried may even end up being the role that defines him. There is a moment in Birding where he says to Edmondson that this kind of stereotyping used to frustrate his mother. âWhen she was so celebrated for Fawlty Towers, she said the only downside was that she didnât get offered any more classical plays.â Edmondson, who to many has been Vyvyan from The Young Ones for his whole career, replies that one of the tragedies of doing great comedy is that it âkiboshes your possibilitiesâ.
West agrees. âShe was really grateful for Fawlty Towers because it meant that when she did plays, people came. But it maybe defined her as a comic actress, when the role she wanted the most was Constance in King John.
Prunella Scales âwas so celebrated for Fawlty Towers, she said the only downside was that she didnât get offered any more classical playsâ Credit: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo
âBefore I did Siegfried, I did almost nothing that was meant to be funny. And I mostly played Victorian murderers or perverts or Conservative Party politicians. When they were commissioning All Creatures, they took it to the BBC and took it to Channel 5. The BBC said, âOh, this is an excellent idea. Weâll make a pilot.â Channel 5 said, âOh, this is an excellent idea. Weâll make a series.â So they went with Channel 5. Itâs a good job they did, because if it was on the BBC, I wouldnât have been cast.â
What does he mean by that? âThere might have been people who didnât take it on,â he says, implying that he wasnât first choice for the role. He wonât expand, but the inference is also that the BBC would have wanted a bigger-name actor than the smaller Channel 5.
Siegfried Farnon, Westâs character in Channel 5âs All Creatures Great and Small, may be a career-defining role Credit: Channel 5
âItâs like Tom Hanks in Big. You look up the list of people who turned it down, and itâs endless. Dennis Quaid, Robert De Niro â people who just would have been awful. Sorry, theyâre great actors, but Tom Hanks is impeccable.â
You can see why he loves that film: Tom Hanks in Big is a child-like enthusiast and West is one too. âIâm a geek. I was a very geeky child, as you can probably imagine, but I was also quite a shy and sometimes quite a scared one. I always enjoyed things that were catalogued or allowed me to tick bits of it off. It made me feel like I had more of a handle on it.â
Having got into birding 20 years ago, he says, âI always wanted to be a member of the Young Ornithologists club. Theyâre now called âWildlife Explorers.â And even as an RSPB ambassador, Iâm allowed to say that I wish they hadnât changed it. But birding never really grabbed me with the force that it does now, until I took over at the Crucible.â
Heâs referring to a stint as the artistic director at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield from 2000 to 2007, following Michael Grandage in a job that included programming as well as performing. Westâs role was to try and sustain the very regional theatre he knew was struggling. âI wasnât very good at it, and it was very difficult, and I couldnât sleep a lot of the time. I lived in the west of Sheffield, quite close to the Derbyshire border, beautiful part of the world, so I used to drive out and walk before breakfast. And Iâd hear things that were singing in the spring. Iâve got quite a good ear for music, and it turns out birdsong was my gateway drug into birding.â
It has been a topsy-turvy few years for West. Being out with his notebook and his lists and doing what Iris Murdoch called âunselfingâ is his therapy. âI have lots and lots of interests. But birding is one thatâs never really left me, just because itâs a way of plugging into the natural world. Itâs a great comfort, when someone dies, to watch the world continuing â especially the non-human world, because so much of the human world is in crisis at the moment. Birding calms me down.â
Watching West going birding with his friend is a soothing experience for the viewer too; the perfect balm in a time of turmoil.
Sam & Ade Go Birding is on Channel 5 on Tuesday April 14 at 8pm
[ID: Sketch in dark reddish brown of Siegfried Farnon and Audrey Hall from All Creatures Great and Small (2020). Both are sitting on a sofa, and Audrey has pulled Siegfried in, hugging him with one arm behind his back and the other around his neck, her head tilted town against him. His face is partially hidden behind her arm, and he is turned towards her, one hand, which is bandaged in gauze, resting on her waist. End ID]
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First attempt at drawing Audrey and Siegfried. One I'll hopefully revisit when art is working better than atm and try to tidy up/correct/generally improve
Thereâs a difference between a female character who exists in a story and has a romantic relationship with a male character versus a female character who exists in a story to have a romantic relationship with a male character
Other than all of the shippers writing the beautiful fanfics that are keeping me sane until season 7 here are who I believe may have caught on to this amazing ship that has yet to sail đ
#1 Good Olâ Gerald:
Regardless of how you feel about the notorious đ„ž this bro totally clocked A & Sâs budding feelings. A said she wouldnât follow him to the lakes because she needed to be there for Helen and Mr. Farnon; Gerald said he always knew this would happen. Based on this and the unspoken beef S and Gerald had for eachother (I mean come on Sâs rat is named Gerald for crying out loud!) it totally seems like he saw something between them.
#2: Pony Gal Susan:
Although Susan was only seen briefly she seemed to know S pretty wellâŠ. She obviously seemed a little jealous and uncomfortable during this exchange when she asked how S & A know each-other and why A is back. When S kicked her to the curb it was a little obvious as well đŹ
3. Literally Anyone on the Train Platform:
All one of those patrons had to do was turn their head to see two lovers embracing after three years apart- ânuff said.
4. Tristan the Bird Boy Farnon:
Tristan knows S & A probably better than anyone since they have been surrogate parents to him for so many years. I find it hard to believe he doesnât have some inclining as to the feelings they have for one another. If I walked in and saw my brother caressing the housekeeperâs pinny I would sure hope he was in love with her otherwise that is just creepy⊠đ¶âđ«ïž Also Tris is who brings up the fact that S is acting worse since A left than when Evelyn died⊠I think he done clocked âem.
5. The Incomparable James and Helen Herriot:
First of all, James has probably spent the most time with S these last three years and he experienced Sâs crash out on the hill while searching for Fly. Helen and A are close pals, I find it hard to believe she wouldnât notice a little something brewing between the two. Also, you know these two lovebirds are pillow talkinâ about their pals and strengthening an argument to clock the feels.
6. Wee Jimmy:
POV you are 5 years old and you walk in on your Godmother-Auntie Audrey caressing your Godfather-Uncle Siegfriedâs cheek⊠You are 99% sure they are married anyway⊠You donât even need to clock whatâs has already been canon since your birth.
7. The Alderson Clan:
Jenny and Richard are chatting it up with Helen and James over at Heston all the time. Richard flat out called S out at Jennyâs dinner asking what is he going to do without A. Obviously they know about Sâs breakdown without A and have come to conclusions.
8. Our Main Man Richard Carmody:
Carmody may have been inebriated when he spilled the fact that S called A âquite quite remarkableâ but he is very intelligent and did a lot of research on âpair bondsâ. I bet all the money in the bank that he clocked the feels when he sobered up.
9. Girlâs Girl Maggie:
Maggie has know the Farnons and A for a long time and her and A seem pretty close. You can see her knowing look in this GIF when she tells Mrs.H- âItâs not always just about what he wantsâ. Maggie is too polite to pry but she clocked emâ a mile away.
10. Jess, Dash and Lucky the Fox:
We all know animals can sense way more than people can. đ¶ đ¶ Jess and Dash know their people better than they know themselves, they sense the love that hasnât been realized yet đ Also are you kidding me that fox was the only witness to this adorable moment, he may have thought it was a fever dream momentarily but he knows whatâs up!
Anyone I missed?? I had fun with this đ please pass this on to the writers to remind them this can be a blatant love story now⊠we all know what is up.
I never thought I could love a "housekeeper ship" or possibly any ship more than this pair. It was this moment right here that sealed the deal for me...
Then I started watching ACGAS and fell in love with these two from the very first episode. I mean, how could I not ship them after this scene...
But then once again, and very late to the game this time, I discovered The Doctor Blake Mysteries and what do you know, I'm suddenly falling down that rabbit hole of the beautiful housekeeper and her slightly grumpy/eccentric man again.
Two out of three ain't bad, still living in hope that ACGAS might make it three out of three in the coming series. đđ» They are meant to be together.
"I would sometimes phone his house, and Auntie Audrey would say: "Sorry, Donald can't speak to you now. He's turning his sardines." That was the sort of man you were dealing with.â / it only took six years until we finally got this scene
I definitely have a thing for brokenhearted Docs / Vets running through town like men possessed to try and stop their (soulmates) housekeepers from leaving đđđ
Something a little bit silly. But silly is good. Especially on a dark and cold day like today. Don't ask what my living-room table looks like right now. Baking soda *everywhere* đ
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