English actor, comedian, musician and writer
My granddaughter is only one, but she gives the best hugs. That’s when I’m happiest at the moment.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 July 2018 source ↗
The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
English actor, comedian, musician and writer
My granddaughter is only one, but she gives the best hugs. That’s when I’m happiest at the moment.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 July 2018 source ↗
Chasing after fire engines as a child with my dad and watching neighbours' houses burn to the ground.
On my wedding day.
At the birth of my son, Joel, and then equally, last June, when my first grandchild, Rory, was born.
Immersed in a bowl of noodles, sat around my parents' dining room table with all my family. Bliss!
Not doing Top Of The Pops when The Young Ones’ single went to number one.
I practise stoicism. Not the stiff-upper-lip, modern stuff, but the ancient Greek philosophy. You have to accept what you can’t change. I try to face forwards all the time. When that doesn’t work, I think about buying a machine gun.
I only ever wanted to be an actor or a rock star. I was suspended from school in the sixth form and allowed back only when I promised to join the army. But I lied.
I worked in the largest pork pie factory in Europe. I had a plastic mushroom-shaped thing and had to tamp down the meat into the pie base. It was a conveyor belt of pies from nine to five. The worst thing was the crackly AM radio, which was played loudly through the tinny tannoy system. I still can’t listen to I’m Not In Love by 10cc without thinking of raw minced pork.
Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Whenever Rik and I got stuck writing a script, we would put this on and the world would immediately seem to be a more stupidly brilliant place again.
I hit a bit of lumpy tarmac driving my motorbike over the Pyrenees in the early 1980s. There was no safety barrier and I found myself riding along the edge of a precipice on half the width of the tyres for 100 yards.
Joseph Fiennes, Greta Scacchi, Cybill Shepherd, Kelsey Grammer, Jerry Lewis, Elisabeth Moss
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