This interview appeared in the Property Section of the newspaper.

In a cupboard I have a set of photographs of my daughter, Ashley, whose picture was taken in exactly the same place once a year, every year. We’ve been going to a timeshare near Ballater for 20 years, and every year we’d take a photo of Ashley, now 20 herself, by the hot tub.

It’s a property that means a lot to me, not least because at a time of my life when just about everything was pretty turbulent, that place represented solidity. When things in my life were horrible, that was the one place that was secure and safe.We decided to buy the timeshare after we had spent a night in jail. We had been staying in a house — not our home — where the police found guns. We were running a pub in the east end of Glasgow at the time and living among gangsters. We decided in that moment that we needed to change our lifestyle both quickly and dramatically.

The timeshare comprises a stand-alone lodge in a beautifully designed complex that includes a swimming pool, a beauty spa and a kids’ club, which was great when Ashley was growing up. We book it for a week in November and continue to go there every year — if I can’t go because of my work schedule, my mum and dad still go.

In my stand-up routine, I say about Calton, the area of Glasgow where I used to live, that everybody there is saving up to move to Iraq, because the official life expectancy in Calton is 10 years less — at 55 — than it is in Iraq.

I left the pub and Calton 11 years ago for the west end of Glasgow, though I still consider Calton my spiritual home. You’d be amazed at the number of really talented people, including artists, actors and musicians, it has produced.

The timeshare overlooks the river Dee, and because it’s autumn when we go, the colours are particularly beautiful. My dad has long been into painting and now I’ve taken it up, mainly watercolours.

The lodge is built of dark-pink stone and is on two floors, with two en-suite bedrooms downstairs. Upstairs it has a big bedroom with a bed you pull down from the wall, and a sauna and a full kitchen with a balcony that overlooks the Dee.

Now, of course, it often acts as a retreat from London if I am doing a lot of work there. I am sure I suffer carbon monoxide withdrawals for a day or two when I am there. And you open the door and a wee deer runs away — it’s like Mary Poppins. Inside, it’s leather suites and a Bang & Olufsen stereo. I always bring my own music — I never leave for Ballater without the Eagles.

Even though it is one lodge among many, it feels very secluded. The silence can be deafening. In Glasgow I was living above the pub and outside it was 24-hours-a-day cars, buses and police sirens, not forgetting the occasional fight and the junkies and prostitutes arguing underneath my window. So invariably I’d be unable to sleep the first two nights.

Even now, with my life a lot saner, I find it hard to sleep the first night I am there because of the quiet. You hear an owl and imagine all sorts of things going on outside. Or you’d hear an owl and Ashley would ask, when she was wee: “What’s that? Is it a tiger?” Until she was about six, she kept forgetting that big glass patio doors separate the house from a patio at the back, so she’d occasionally bash her head against them. From that main room, the lounge, you could sit back and watch amazing sunsets. Sometimes I’d take a few folk up from Calton, perhaps someone who was having a tough time of it, and they’d all fall in love with it. I am an eternal optimist and look for the good in people — you have to.

I honestly can’t remember how much the timeshare cost us, though I know it was quite expensive. But it was worth it to get a break from the life of madness that was living in Calton. Plus there was all this beauty, and facilities such as the swimming pool that you’d get in a fancy hotel. I remember saying when I first tried clay-pigeon shooting that it was the first time I had held a gun legally. They were probably calling me Calamity Jane, I was such a natural good shot.

It has always been a mixed and very friendly crowd who stay in the development, though we usually kept quiet about saying too much about ourselves. Last year, though, one of our neighbours, who we’ve known for years, came over and said, “I saw you on the telly”, which made me think,

“Oh no, I can’t come back here again.”

I was a bit mortified — all those people who hadn’t known too much about me and my background and yet whose kids had grown up with my kid. But there’s no way I won’t keep coming back, it’s that lovely.