People regularly invoke your name as someone they’d like to join them at the perfect dinner party. Are you such a fantastic guest? hhhhssss
When people say that, I usually reply: “Ah, you haven’t seen me eat.” It’s a very charming thing to hear, a way people get, I guess, to list qualities of their heroes or people they admire and imagine very kindly that I’m a good speaker or that I’m a wit of some sort, and hope I’m friendly. The list usually includes Winston Churchill and Oscar Wilde and I always feel extremely unworthy, but I don’t want to bore anybody with, you know, the usual British modesty ritual. I’ll just say that it’s a great honour and I certainly try when I’m at dinner parties. Although, have you noticed post Covid, there seem to be fewer of them? Or perhaps it’s just that people have stopped inviting me.
“If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.” Was Melchett the godfather of Brexit? Shauny79
It’s a brilliant observation by whoever put that question that the speech of Melchett’s, which I loved saying, does so precisely fit the attitude to Brexit: “A total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face.” Playing Melchett was one of the great joys of my life. To be let loose on such powerful eccentricity and unpredictable barking madness is a great treat for any actor.
What is your achilles heel in trivia quizzes? vastariner
Oh, popular culture and pop generally. I wouldn’t know one Kardashian from another. I know they exist, and I know most of their names begin with K, but I’m not being fake ignorant, I genuinely just don’t understand. I don’t see why I should go to Wikipedia and read up on the history of the Kardashian family. I know it’s a phenomenon. And all phenomena are worthy of interest in the human story, I suppose. But there isn’t room for everything. So I wouldn’t be good on K-pop or Girls Aloud or indie or hip-hop. My husband is a great hip-hop fan and has taught me to love and respect Kendrick Lamar. Eminem has genuine poet skills and is quite exciting to listen to, although I wouldn’t put it on as I’m going for a drive, I have to confess.
Did you really win a large pile of Turkish Delight for being the brainiest boy at Cambridge University and knowing all the biggest words, while Hugh Laurie won a small truck for having the boggliest eyes in college (as depicted in the Viz comic strip Fry’s Turkish Delight)? TopTramp
Someone did send me a scan of it, and I was of course simultaneously thrilled, horrified and deeply honoured to be in the pages of that sensational magazine. If prizes were being given for the boggliest eyes, surely Hugh would have won. I don’t remember anyone else at the university with bogglier. Would I have been the brainiest boy at Cambridge University? The thing is, when you go to a place like Cambridge, the first person you’d meet is someone who speaks seven languages, then you turn around and there’s a person who’s doing binomials and polynomials in their head. I can understand all the hatred and contempt for Oxbridge and these kinds of great British institutions that were once so lauded and praised.
How are you coping with getting old? Bustersmyboss
Do you know what? I rather like it. Yes, there are leaks. Leaks and creaks. And, of course, being a baby boomer, it’s very interesting because we are the demographic leaders and have been since the moment we were born, with sugary cereals and sweets advertised to us on television. Then as we became slightly older, we became yuppies. We were the spending generation. Now, as baby boomers, you start getting advertisements for people completely mysteriously making tomato sandwiches in conservatories talking to the camera about their insurance and funeral plans, stepping out of baths, lifting themselves out of electric armchairs, mobility scooters and incontinence pads. There are more adverts for us now than there are for children. I was never cute, I’ve got better looking as I’ve got older. Not that I’m good looking, but it suits me better than youth did when I was a bit awkward, gawky and looked older than my age. So that was confusing and weird. Now I’ve sort of settled into my mid-60s and they seem to suit me pretty well.
If you’re so clever, why can’t you invent time travel or a cure for cancer? TurangaLeela2 and TopTramp
Who says that I haven’t, didn’t, wouldn’t, aren’t at this very moment? No, you’re right. Good heavens, I wish I were that clever. There are brands of clever. There’s smart quick. You look at someone like Lee Mack and you think: “How does a brain operate that fast?” You get other people who have a cleverness of verbal facility and talk about philosophy, history and poetry all in one go. And then there are others who have a kind of intelligence that’s a wisdom, an insight into human behaviour that’s nothing to do with education. How to cope with life: you don’t need education for that. People use the great phrase: “Can’t sit the right way on a toilet seat” to mean doesn’t have any common sense. But so there are so many wildly different kinds of intelligence. I’m aware that I have verbal facility and that I have a good memory and I’m very pleased about those things. If only they helped in things like a cure for cancer.
What would have happened if it was Laurie and Fry and your career had taken the path of Hugh’s and him yours? TurangaLeela2
I think if I had his physical talents for sport: tennis, cricket, football, rowing … I can’t even dive into a swimming pool. If I could sing and play an instrument, I would sit all day at the piano. But it’s a bit like a flatfooted platypus looking up at an eagle and saying: “If I could fly, I would do this. I would do that.” Hugh’s life is brilliant and he’s earned it and the respect and affection in which people hold him is so fully deserved. He’s a wonderful, wise, kind, good, funny, clever man, and brilliantly talented. In many ways, his life is much more admirable and enviable than mine. And yet I wouldn’t swap. It loops back to your question about old age. One of the things you come to terms with is that your life is your life, and all the terrible mistakes, wrong terms, regrets and I wishes and why didn’t I? You do actually think: “Well, it was my life and I led it, and I wouldn’t really have it any other way.”
• The Inventor is in Vue cinemas from 8 March
