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Stephen Fry
The QI don and bon vivant extraordinaire is probably best known for his starring roles in Blackadder and A bit of Fry and Laurie. His bestselling novels include The Liar and The Hippopotamus, and more recently his two-part BBC programme The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive brought awareness of bipolar disorder into the popular consciousness. SSP met up with the man at the Royal Television Society Awards.
Are you looking forward to the awards tonight? I am looking forward enormously… to them being over. No - of course I am, yes. But it is a rule of award ceremonies that there has never been an awards ceremony in the history of the genre, which anybody has ever come out and said 'yes, I really enjoyed that but I thought it was a bit too short.' That's never happened. So, you know, as long as it's quick.
Can you tell me what your favourite conspiracy theory is? My favourite conspiracy theory is that I believe that there is a group of incredibly ignorant and foolish people who believe there are conspiracies and they seem to believe it very strongly. They believe there's no such thing as man-made global warming, they believe there's no such thing as HIV, and they've become a tedious, over-worn and immensely dull and self-righteous strand of documentary film-making. And it's immensely annoying. And someone must break this conspiracy.
What wouldn't you make a joke about? Blimey. I really can't think of anything to be honest. I mean, 'what' isn't the right question, it's 'when'. I wouldn't make a joke about cancer to someone who'd just lost someone they loved, you know what I mean. There are obvious limits of taste and good manners. But they are not necessarily to do with the subject matter itself. It's the context.
Did your parents ever want you to get a 'proper job'? Yes, they did; they wanted me to be a barrister. For quite a long time they tried to persuade me it was the same as being an actor. And I almost fell for it, but I fortunately landed in this one instead. I'm sure I would have enjoyed being a barrister; there's nothing wrong with the idea of being a barrister, except I think that it's too much like hard work, to be honest. You have to prepare with diligence and integrity, and that's not something I've ever been able to do.
Do you ever get stage fright? Yes, I'm a pacer. I walk a dozen miles backstage - up and down and up and down and up and down. And the bad thing is when you have two people who are about to go onstage and they're both pacers you have to try and get different places for them each to walk or you bump into each other, and get even sweatier.
