Acton, acton. Welcome to We Have Ways, 12 days of Christmas guests.

Well, we're talking to a famous face about their personal relationship with the Second World War.

As one of our final guests for this series, we're speaking to the wonderful actor Ian Lavender about his career

and of course what it was like playing private pike in the iconic Dad's Army.

Don't panic, don't panic. Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me,

Almari and James Holland and Ian welcome, Merry Christmas. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I'm too you all. I mean normally Alan, I just sit here talking about various

bits about the Second World War. We thought we'd be fun over Christmas is to have the 12 Christmas

specials where we talk to people that we might not normally talk to about what the Second World

War means to them and how it's affected their lives and obviously it's played a very large part

in your life albeit one a little bit after the event. What does it mean to me? It was a living.

But I was my brother was born immediately before the war in 39 so he was a sort of last hope

and I was born in 46 just after the war so I was just celebration. Whether I turned out to be

for my parents I don't know but that's what it seemed to be and my father was in the police force

so I suppose it was called reserved occupation I suppose and I was such he had to go around

and lecture to the home guards around South Birmingham where we lived or he lived at that time

and my brother still has a movie kid called Cyclostyle pages. Wow which were sort of

run off a machine with a sort of ink skin thing and with instructions on how to deal with

butterfly bombs and he had to go to the bomb before decided to call in the rank amateurs of the

home guard before they would call in the real ones and the only one he had to deal with now he

being a strict methodist and therefore T total so he told me I found out much later and I felt

so offended upset when I found out that the burnt coffee on Christmas morning was in fact coffee

...