There are lots of us on a bed in the Cardiff hotel where I am meeting Rob
Brydon. First, Brydon, secondly, yours truly. Over the hour we are joined by
a full supporting cast of Brando, Pacino, Anthony Hopkins, Wogan, Ronnie
Corbett, Woody Allen and many more. Two Brydon factoids. He gives good chat,
name-dropping here, voice-dropping there. And, contrary to his
funny-but-moody TV persona, in the flesh he is funny and hospitable.
But then the 42-year-old Welshman is currently all for upending expectations.
The comedian best known as the cuckolded cabbie Keith Barret in Marion
and Geoff is about to appear in two very different straight roles. This
Monday he co-stars in a BBC One drama, Napoleon, as the sinister
French politician of the French Revolution Stanislas Fréron. And on Sunday
he will be on stage at the Old Vic in the annual 24 Hour Plays
Celebrity Gala amid a cast including fellow comic Ronni Ancona and that
theatrical titan Fiona Shaw. I’d like Brydon to tell me more, but he can’t.
“We all meet for drinks and nibbles at 8pm, then the writers work all night,
we rehearse new pieces the next day and perform in the evening. I don’t know
any more. The producer left me a message and I didn’t return his call and
now I’ve left it so long it would be odd to call back. They just asked me to
do it and I knew about it because Michael Sheen is a friend of mine and he
did it. He said it was the most terrifying thing he has done, but also one
of the most thrilling.”
It is clearly a departure. “I am actively trying to broaden my, dare I say it,
talent and get out of my comfort zone. I am wary of getting pigeonholed in a
type of dark comedy. You do a job and forget about it, but that’s what
people see in you. After Marion and Geoff people would shout at me,
‘Oi, you’ve left your car behind!’ ” Brydon does know that one mate will be
at the Old Vic to reassure him. “Ronnie Corbett is hosting with Kevin Spacey
and he’s a friend, so I suppose if I flounder he can come on and say [pushes
imaginary glasses up long nose and breaks into bang-on Corbettese], ‘Rob’s
floundering here so I’ll tell you the one about . . .’ ” The
Times tells Brydon that he will be in a pool of actors that will
include, as well as Ancona and Shaw, Maureen Lipman, Kwame Kwei-Armah,
Stephen Mangan, Christian Slater and Sam West. He is impressed but anxious.
“I hope they pair me with some dramatic people, not the comedy world. But what
if the writers don’t want you? It’ll be like being the last one picked for
football. I don’t want to be the one who has bugger all to do. That would be
very embarrassing.”
Like Brydon’s comedy chums David Walliams and Matt Lucas, his background is
actually in acting rather than pure stand-up. He recently filmed the part of
the magistrate Mr Fang for a BBC remake of Oliver Twist. “I met
Richard Eyre recently – for a thing that I couldn’t do, I would hate your
readers to think I didn’t get the part – and he said I was that rare thing,
a comedian and actor who is taken seriously as both and that was lovely.“I
think in a way I’m lucky that I’ve never had a monster hit and gone
‘whoosh’. The Hollywood actor Bob Balaban said, ‘Don’t ever be hot, just be
warm. If you gotta be hot or cold don’t be cold, but try not to be hot.’ I
don’t think I’ve ever been in fashion.”
There is something nigglingly contradictory about Brydon. He seems torn
between pushing himself and coasting. He is in Cardiff shooting the second
series of the BBC sitcom Gavin and Stacey, in which he plays Uncle
Bryn, the kind of excitable character he can do in his sleep. The straight
work is certainly more of achallenge, and respect is due to him for that,
but he seems ambivalent about whether he really wants to pursue a stage
career, “maybe a short run of something edgy at the Donmar”. He is recently
remarried and living happily in southwest London, and work no longer seems
his highest priority. “If I won the lottery I’d stop tomorrow and potter
around at home.” But he knows that at some point his soul will need
nourishing.
“That’s right, because when I did voiceovers and presenting in the Nineties,
after a while I really wantedto do something substantial. That’s how Marion
and Geoff came about. But I don’t have the hunger I had then. My life
now is my wife and my three kids.” Midlife crisis? “No, more like midlife
contentment. Someone like Ricky Gervais has drive – appalling dress sense,
he dresses like a market trader – but he can focus better than me. If I’d
done The Office I’d have gone on a world cruise, not written Extras.”
Brydon seems well-adjusted in a profession not known for balanced egos. “I’d
love to be the most celebrated actor of his generation, a newBrando, but I
know that’s not going to happen. My head isn’t that swollen. So much of the
acting process is preposterous, all that waiting around and being brought
juice in your trailer, it’s like the equivalent of a kid being brought
lemonade sitting outside a pub. You feel like such a doofus.”
There certainly won’t be much opportunity to sit around while he is being a
24-hour drama person. “I’m looking forward to the discipline of being
tested, but also I am trying to take a different approach to work. Usually
in comedy my first thought is the best one. Now I want to enjoy the craft of
acting a little bit more.”
It is not the first time Brydon will have appeared on stage without trying to
get laughs, but it is the first time for a long time. At Porthcawl
Comprehensive he was the class show-off: “I was Sky Masterson in Guys
and Dolls, Billy Bigelow in Carousel. I knew that was what I
wanted to do professionally.”
Things went pear-shaped when he tried to get into drama college. “I auditioned
for RADA but didn’t get in. I was terribly intimidated by these men from
London who had Byronic Rufus Sewell hair and long coats and they were all
exploring the human condition while I’d been in musicals and had
impersonated my teachers.”Eventually, he landed a place at the Royal Welsh
College of Music and Drama. “I did a year, but then BBC Wales was looking
for local talent for a radio show and I was in a double act where I played a
club singer called Tony Casino – long before Steve Coogan did Tony Ferrino,
I might add – who sang songs like Amarillo with a heavy Welsh
accent. I started doing voices there and ended up being offered a morning
show.
“At my last tutorial my teacher said I was drifting into light entertainment.
Two years later I was hosting a Welsh tea-time panel show called Invasion
and I’d enter by running down the aisle in a blue suede blouson with
Eighties bouffant hair. So my teacher was right.”
As for the future, Keith Barret may yet return, though, personally, I’d rather
see him work again with his friend Coogan. Their improvised banter in
Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story could have set
them up as a postmodern Hope and Crosby, but Coogan is busy in America.
“Steve and I haven’t seen each other for a while, but when we last met he
said I’m like a brother to him. I guess he’s like a sister to me.”
24 Hour Plays Celebrity Gala, Old Vic, London SE1 (www.oldvictheatre.com
020-7401 9280), Sunday; Napoleon, BBC One, Monday
