By Sheena McDonald

IT has never surprised me that so many people who work in some sector of public life - politics, television, the stage - are clergymen's children. Growing up in a manse, as I did in the 1950s, instils an unspoken sense of duty. Whatever skills or abilities one is gifted with must be developed and turned to use on behalf of the common good. And you start early: I'm told that as a toddler I would stand on the pew at the Sunday morning service and mimic the man in the pulpit - my father (William) - when he rose his arms to deliver the blessing to the congregation. Week in, week out, I became used to seeing my father on his hind-legs delivering "news" (in the form of a sermon) with wit and style and wisdom - but never to his personal benefit. Performance, whether in the style of David Tennant or Jon Snow, James Runcie or Gordon Brown, can be executed with excellence but without self-aggrandisement.

Burns's "honest poverty" is celebrated in the manse. Material wealth is (necessarily) disdained in favour of the riches of education and learning. So while the lack of carpets in the manse delayed my learning to walk until I was two, preferring to shuffle around the linoleum on my bottom, I could recite poetry from an early age; it was read to me by my mother and enthusiastically absorbed and deployed. Since I endured all the common childhood ailments of the time - measles, German measles, chickenpox, scarlet fever - I spent many hours is darkened rooms relying on my mother reading to me. As soon as I could read myself, I devoured everything. I was a weekly library-user and a beneath-the-bedclothes torchlight reader for years. I also, excitingly, abused my parents' bookshelves, reading X-rated material at an inappropriate age. In a manse? Oh, you'd be surprised!

I believe I lacked for nothing. We had as much fun as any children and were, I fear, as mischievous and downright naughty. But underpinning the vicissitudes of daily life were cardinal values: stability and security, along with ambitious expectation. The thrice-yearly school report, peppered with "could do betters", regularly prompted a paternal shake of the head and the (to this day) most damning words in the English language: "I'm disappointed." One was obliged to excel, but not in pursuit of trinkets or popular acclaim - rather, because neglecting or wasting intellectual potential was effectively wasting life.

And what about the rebellious period? Mine was soft-focus and innocent: walking around Edinburgh barefoot and bra-less in a denim maxi-dress and cheesecloth smock. This was deemed unworthy of comment at home. I have yet do "do drugs". The most heinous sin I can remember committing in the manse was breaking my grandmother's rope of amber beads by trying to hula-hoop with them. Oh - and crying when the hairdresser had finished her work by tying a hated bow in my hair, which earned me a slap and the stern reproof: "It doesn't matter what you think - you will not be rude!"

Today, colleagues can testify that I no goody-goody or bible-basher or tub-thumper. I am rooted in my Presbyterian upbringing, which I think is always a lively Petri dish for societal contributions and responsibility. "Could do better" is a fact of life that I was brought up to interpret as an encouragement, since mortal perfection is unattainable.