David Benson, 46, actor, used to fear the onset of mental illness. His mother suffered from schizophrenia throughout his childhood and is tormented by telepathic messages to this day.

He believes he was around five when she first hit his twin sister and accused the girl of trying to kill her.

"It was something that was increasingly repeated with all of us, the objects of her paranoia," he says.

When she was eventually subdued and taken into hospital, Mr Benson remembers feeling guilty because he had such a sense of relief.

As a schoolboy he kept his home life a secret from friends, and only discussed it for the first time when he landed his first acting job in Edinburgh in 1992.

As part of the project, which involved actors working with people who had suffered mental health problems, Mr Benson was asked to play the part of his own mother.

"It was something I never dreamed of doing, but it gave me an incredible insight of what it must have been like to have been her," he says.

Today he says he loves his mother and can empathise with her.

"She is having messages sent telepathically from not only the people around her, but public figures and even objects and animals," he says.

"She is in constant telepathic communication with the entire universe, which must be absolutely terrifying.

"That took me a long time to understand - that it was not something she could be talked out of, it was real. Once I realised that it became a lot easier, because it took the fight out of it."

His award-winning one man-show, Think No Evil of Us, in which he plays tragic comic Kenneth Williams, who also suffered from mental illness, is inspired by his own experiences.

In some ways, Mr Benson says his childhood experiences have been an asset, in that they have given him a rare insight.