Steve Pemberton says he’s keen to reclaim his Benidorm character Mick Garvey one day
The Inside No 9 star still the misses the cast but had to leave for family reasons
This week TV Magazine gets to know Steve Pemberton...
My earliest memory is being at playschool, where I grew up in Lancashire, where there was a big Wendy house. Inside was a basket of costumes and I just remember loving dressing up.
I used to do impressions of my grandparents by putting on a flat cap or a pinny. Assuming different characters has always been part of me. I grew up wanting to be Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, wearing a striped blazer and dancing with the penguins.
At 25, I had a heart attack but that was a red herring and I don’t worry about my mortality. I definitely try to keep myself in decent health but I didn’t jump on to Dry January straight away this year because I am in a play, and one of the great things about being in the theatre is going out for dinner and some drinks afterwards. But I have been doing a dry-ish February.
Every day was fantastic playing Mick Garvey in Benidorm. We had the best nights out as a cast, hitting the karaoke bars. I’m tone-deaf, but love feeling like a rock star. I left the show, as it’s hard to be out there for three months every year when you have a family, but I’d love to go back at some point.
I am something of a worrier. When you are writing and directing your own work, you have so much on your mind. On top of that, I have three kids [Lucas, 16, Maddie, 13, and Adam, 11], my partner Alison, a house and a dog. At night I try to do a mental list of what I have to do the next day, but I really miss having a pencil and paper and crossing stuff off. In this digital age, that is sadly something I seem to have lost the habit of doing.
Our puppy is six months old and I have spectacularly failed to bond with it. It’s because I have been away a lot in the evenings and busy in the day. I get the feeling the dog, which is a schnoodle [cross between a schnauzer and a poodle], hates me. It bit me once – little puppies have such sharp, needle-like teeth and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. Now I am timid around it and I’m sure it senses that, so these days I have to hide and watch it through a crack in the door. I’m fully aware that is not what a grown man should be doing.
My fantasy dinner-party guests are Billy Joel and Meryl Streep. I am a big fan of Billy, even though it was uncool to be a teenager that was into him. We have a piano in our house so he could sing for his supper and I would sing along to Piano Man, which is my all-time favourite song. As for Meryl, she comes across as really down to earth and not a luvvie type. I feel we would get on well and we could do a bit of Donald Trump bashing.
One particular moment stands out as the happiest of my life – 13 May 2000 was when my eldest son Lucas was born, and on 14 May 2000, it was the BAFTAs. We were nominated for The League Of Gentlemen, which was the first TV show I had ever done, but I didn’t go to the ceremony as Lucas had just arrived. I brought him home from the hospital and watched the ceremony on telly with him in my arms. When we were named as Best Comedy, it was such a combination of personal and professional joy.
Inside No 9, Tuesday, 10pm, BBC2
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