Is This Your family?

Nigel Havers and Bobby Ball on why their new sitcom will strike a chord with everyone

- Ian MacEwan

Meeting your other half’s family can be challenging at the best of times.

But in new Gold comedy The Cockfields, starring comedian Joe Wilkinson and Motherland’s Diane Morgan as London lovebirds Simon and Donna, it’s even more complicated as Simon has two dads!

Set on the Isle of Wight, the gentle three-parter centres on the couple’s first visit together to Simon’s family home.

While Simon, who’s turning 40, finds spending time with his everdoting mother Sue (Sue Johnston), controlling stepdad Ray (Bobby Ball) and Alan Titchmarshobsessed stepbrother David (Ben Rufus Green) rather annoying, Donna finds their quirky ways rather charming – at first.

However, she’s then taken aback when they run into Simon’s trendy biological father, Larry (Nigel Havers), who has dyed hair and a much younger girlfriend, Melissa (Sarah Parish)!

TV Times caught up with Bobby, 75, and Nigel, who turns 68 on 6 November, to find out whether it was all happy families playing Simon’s two dads…

What was it that appealed to you most about this show?