Christopher Biggins Interview: 'The wonderful thing about me - if I may say, modestly - is that I have never had any ambition'
‘I was 70 last December and for about an hour I thought “what is going on?” says Christopher Biggins, clutching his clavicle in mock drama. “But now I love it – because 70 is the new 50.” You heard it here first so it must be true.
He is certainly looking fabulous, here in The Ivy at lunch, like a big glossy pearl at home in its oyster.
One of the great joys of lunch with Biggins lunch is that there is no question too mundane to elicit some glorious anecdote, rich with famous names, crackling with laughter and trailing clouds of stardust. He is the most genuinely lovely man.
“There were three things that I wanted to be : an actor, a chef and a vicar. I played many vicars – including the sex-crazed vicar in Poldark, I did Masterchef … all I’ve got to do is conquer the acting and I’ve done it all.”
Of course the acting career of Biggins is redolent with delightfully outrageous anecdotes, and, upon my asking whether he felt he would be able to cope with the vicissitudes of an Edinburgh Fringe, he bursts into memories concerning one of his many seasons at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, playing Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“I was the best Puck in the park that year!” he beams. “We used to have matinees when the Japanese tourists used to come and they had no idea what was going on onstage, and you would suddenly hear (at this point Biggins does an animated and probably not very PC impression of a Japanese father loudly marshalling his brood) and then they would position their family with us as the background to take photos!
“Animals walk across, birds fly, and when it rains the rule is that you cannot leave the stage until a disembodied voice says ‘Will the actors leave the stage’. You’ve got to keep going as long as humanly possible because if they do it in the first act they have to give the money back and they don’t want to do that.” He emits the trademark Biggins laugh and heads turn.
“When I was doing Puck, Kate O’Mara was Titania and she had this very low-cut dress. So … I am kneeling at her feet, as Puck, and she is doing a big speech and as she speaks it starts to rain and the rain goes ‘plink’ off her tits, which are solid , plink, ’cos she’s had the work done, plink, plink. I thought, ‘Please God’ – because I have to speak after her – I thought, ‘Please will someone say ‘will the actors please leave the stage.’ Plink, plink. I then start to laugh, the audience know what I am laughing at, they start to laugh… even SHE then laughs because it is hysterical ! So I always say if you can work in Regents Park Open Air Theatre you can work anywhere.”
We have Gyles Brandreth and Nicholas Parsons to thank for Biggins’ appearance in Edinburgh, They “laid the gauntlet down” last year, he says. His Late Lunch will feature the entire gamut of Festival life, from Basil Brush to a random bagpiper. And of course he already knows Basil Brush.
“I worked with the original operator,” he says. “He was seriously… odd. In rehearsal you don’t get Basil, you just get the hand and he turned round and said to the floor manager, ‘Could you tell Mr Biggins not to look at me, to look at the hand.’ So for the rest of the rehearsal I looked at the hand.
“Then at the dress rehearsal Basil arrives and I say, ‘Hello Basil’ and he says ‘This is not Basil, this is Basil’s understudy.’ So by this time I am hysterical … I don’t know where the f*** I am!” There is another story but Biggins made me swear to keep it off the record … you might persuade him to tell it if you go to the show.
I ask after his “40-minute tragic revelation” – the new trope so beloved of the comedy performer. His brow furrows.
“I don’t think there IS any tragic 40 minute painful bit,” he worries. “I am very lucky – I was never bullied at school and I am rarely bullied now. I can honestly say that. I have never been shy of my sexuality. I never discussed it with my parents who are no longer with us, sadly. I never felt the need to discuss it.” I wonder aloud if they might not have guessed.
“I think they guessed,” he hoots. “I mean they met boyfriends, boyfriends used to come and stay or they would come and stay with me when I was living with my partners… but it was not something that needed to be said.
“The only… thing… I ever had about my sexuality was when AIDS was very prevalent and all gay people were considered to be murderers. It was very difficult to be a children’s performer and that is what I was doing two children’s series – Rentaghost and On Safari – so you couldn’t go shouting from the rooftops what you were.”
Biggins was born to be a National Treasure. “When I was at Bristol Old Vic drama school, an MP called Maughm, or something, said to me, ‘One day your laugh will make a million.’ That million spills out across the Ivy, and again, heads turn. If you ask him nicely when you have a Late Lunch with Biggins, you might hear some of the outrageous tales I cannot share here… the worries of having nowhere to masturbate in The Jungle, how he took cannabis on a TV documentary and woke up in a cave, the wondrously potty mouth of Miriam Margolyes and a story about Michael McIntyre that rocked me to my very core. I do my journalistic best to inject some jeopardy into a first foray on to the Fringe but the National Treasure is having none of it.
“I do not have a stressful bone in my body,” he smiles. “Nothing worries me. Not even doing an Edinburgh chat show. I am really looking forward to it.”
Late Lunch with Biggins, Pleasance Dome, 2:40pm until 25 August