Actor and author Stephen Mangan says he feels “edgy” if he hasn’t managed to get out for a run.
The star of BBC’s The Split and sitcom Episodes says: “I just feel slightly antsy if I haven’t run in a day. Some people put on lycra and ride around parks on bikes – I run up a hill.”
The 56-year-old, whose roles have included Adrian Mole in the BBC adaptation, Guy Secretan in Green Wing, and Dan Moody in I’m Alan Partridge, says perhaps it’s his age.
“I’ve got quite a few friends into running, maybe middle-aged panic is setting in. We’re all trying to cling onto whatever fitness and youth we still have.”
Mangan, who is a World Book Day ‘£1 author’ this year – offering his children’s book The Fart That Broke World Book Day for £1/€1.50 to get more kids reading – got the running “bug” after doing his first marathon at 30.
“It’s very therapeutic,” he says, “Whatever’s bothering you tends to float to the surface. It’s sort of your brain churning away without really consciously doing it, and also getting outside in the fresh air.
“When you’re doing a play, you have to keep yourself in pretty good shape.”
Mangan is currently starring alongside The Split co-star Nicola Walker in Unicorn at the Garrick Theatre, playing a couple who bring a third person into their marriage.
“It’s nice in the play that we’re married again after the horrendous split,” he says with a laugh. “We just get on and we really like each other, and we’re very relaxed with each other – she’s a great actress.”
For any stage actor, keeping up energy levels to perform every evening for a long run is taxing. “It’s a slight jet lag thing,” explains Mangan, “rather than getting up at 6am to go on a film set, you shift your whole focus to later in the day. So I might write for three hours a day, go for a run, stare at a wall for a bit, read a couple of books, go and lie on the stage for 10 minutes, and then, hopefully by 7:30 I’m in the right frame of mind to be in a throuple.
Between TV and film acting, theatre, radio (recently starring in BBC’s The Island) and writing children’s books – as well as being a dad to three boys, Harry, 17, Frank 14, and Jack, eight – life is “disordered and chaotic”, he says.
“Running, reading and eating opportunities have to be grabbed whenever they present themselves for all those three things,” he says, and reading is “completely central” to his life and wellbeing.
“There are long hours on set or sat in a trailer waiting to go on set [as an actor] that’s perfect for reading. I’ll read in the kitchen when everyone else is clanking about. I’ll read on the [London] tube. I’ll read in my dressing room, wherever I can grab a bit of time. I’ve normally got three of four books on the go at once.”
As a child Mangan always had his “head in a book”, even at the dinner table. “I would read all the way through meals – I wouldn’t stop to eat.”
He adds: “My parents weren’t that flush with money, but would always let me buy any book I wanted. They were very supportive of me reading so I really quickly built up quite a big library of books.”
Mangan, married to actor Louise Delamere, reckons he owns thousands now – “My wife is like, ‘You’ve read it, you know, you’re not going to re-read it.”
But he equates finding an author he likes to making a friend. “This is why people feel so desolate when they finish a great book, they’re really enjoying the relationship. It’s not over, but that intense, passionate period has come to an end, and you can’t throw a book away,” he laughs
Research shows more than a million children in the UK don’t own a book. “It’s heartbreaking really, because there is this world, and there are all of those worlds [in books],” he says.
“And to be able to visit those worlds, to be able to visit other people’s lives, and be able to look at the world through the eyes of great writers – who can see something about the world and who we are and the way we behave that the rest of us can’t, and can articulate it so beautifully and movingly and hilariously – I want that for everybody,” says Mangan.
Another barrier could be the prevalence of screens though, too.
“Screens are sort of crack cocaine for children and it’s very hard to compete with that dopamine hit,” he says.
“We’re living through this really crazy social experiment with phones and screens and one day we’ll look back on as several generations that had a very peculiar upbringing.”
When his own children were little, “my favourite bit of the day was sitting on [the] bed reading together” – and it’s something Mangan has encouraged ever since, even naming the heroes in his books after his boys.
“You’d think that writing a book would be encouragement enough [for them to read] but I’m the least impressive person they know. I’m just their dad.”
From his breakthrough TV debut in Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years in 2001, Mangan’s career has steadily flourished – which has made fame easier to handle, he says.
“I was never in one massive smash hit at a young age, and it went from nought to 60. Everything has very gradually happened to me. So it’s almost without noticing it.”
So the level of fame he’s acquired is “not intrusive” – “I haven’t got a phalanx of stalkers outside. It’s very bearable.”
Although the people pleaser in him is “hard to shift”, he’s become “more discerning” as he’s got older.
“I think you know when you’ve done a good piece of work so I’m not interested anymore in what people say in newspapers or on TV or in reviews. It doesn’t’ bother me.
“I still want to please people, but I think who I want to please has become a smaller group. I have people I admire and respect, and their opinion is of great value to me
“If you really want to hunt for someone who thinks you’re a t***, you can find them, of course. [But] why? It’s of no interest to me, either to find people who think I’m awful, or to find people who think I’m the best thing since sliced bread, if there are any. That’s their issue.”
World Book Day (celebrated on March 6) is a charity that improves access to books, helping children to read for fun, because it improves lives.
