Dougray Scott, meanwhile, has become a co-star with Tom Cruise on screen, a name in lights on both sides of the Atlantic.

So you can't just do as the slogan on a Dougray Scott website suggests. You can't "just pick a Dougray. Any Dougray".

For if it hadn't been for John Dougray, there might not have been a Dougray Scott now!

It's a family quirk for both to carry through life.

And it happened because the actor Dougray, at the start of his career, found that his real name Stephen Scott was already registered with Equity.

Stephen's mum rang John's mum. Would there be any objection to Stephen adopting Dougray as his Christian name for acting purposes.

John's mum naturally rang John who recalls: "I wasn't bothered, really. And anyway, I had no idea then how things would turn out."

So the change was made, with Dougray Scott later, towards the end of his teens, coming to stay with John and his wife Betty at their home - then at Gunnerton in the Tyne Valley - on his way to begin studies at the Welsh College of Music and Drama where, not surprisingly perhaps, he was named "most promising drama student".

John, who now lives at Lesbury near Alnwick and runs his public relations business from Amble, has not met Dougray since.

But he recalls: "He struck us as a very nice sort of guy, a bit shy then, not conceited in any way, but strong in voice and certainly politically aware.

"Actually," John adds, getting us deeper into the family album, "I remember his father Allen Scott better.

"We were first cousins and he was an actor too. He appeared a lot at the Unity Theatre in Glasgow, and also got a screen part, though it was quite different from the sort of stuff that Dougray has been tackling.

"He got one or two small parts in Ealing Studios films, appearing as a walk-on policeman or something like that.

"These made great outings for us. The whole family would troop along to the local cinema to see him say a few words as an incidental policeman or something like that.

"There'd be whispers in the cinema: 'There he is, there he is.'

"All the time you had to keep your eyes glued to the screen. His appearances were usually fleeting, and if you weren't careful you could easily miss them."

The enthusiasm of John's recollection suggests that those glimpses of Dougray Scott's dad may have left even greater impressions with some people than do those of Tom Cruise today!