Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2022-07-07T17:47:49.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Jessie Burton: "If you want to get a job as an actor, write a novel. It’s a long audition process"
items: Wanderlust's Toni Collette: 'Someone told me I'm the first woman to have an orgasm on the BBC'
items: How realistic is new drama The Split on BBC1? Princess Diana's divorce lawyer separates the fact from fiction
items: Bake Off is back – but has Paul Hollywood forgiven Prue Leith for last year's accidental tweet?
items: 'I’m not the perfect Muslim, I'm not the perfect Brit: I'm just being me': Bake Off's Nadiya Hussain talks living in the spotlight ahead of her new BBC cookery show
items: Picnic at Hanging Rock star Natalie Dormer: "I had no desire to get into a corset again”
items: The Affair star Ruth Wilson on the gender pay gap and new movie Dark River
items: Kit Harington on Game of Thrones fame, his ancestry and what he’d do if he were prime minister for a day
items: Love Island is like Shakespeare with a suntan
items: How well do Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield actually know each other?
items: What do Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby really think of each other?
items: James Norton on Christmas in Grantchester: "There are bad jumpers, snow and an impending birth..."
items: Fearless star Helen McCrory: "We’re all pioneers as women now because there’s no blueprint"
items: Poldark's Aidan Turner: People are a little scared to approach me in public – and I'm happy with that
items: Joan Bakewell tells her side of the story about her affair with Harold Pinter
items: Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall: “Why am I walking away from the two best actors in the country?”
items: Christina Ricci: I would never have got to play Zelda Fitzgerald if I hadn’t cast myself
items: The Missing's David Morrissey: Television was my education, much more than school
items: Emily Blunt on sexist casting calls and why she hates to be judged by her looks
items: Mamie Gummer on The Collection and her mother, Meryl Streep
items: Remembering the imagination of Roald Dahl
items: Piers Morgan: “Self-doubt is a massively tiresome virtue. I don’t really get the point of it”
items: Emma Willis: "It’s great that women in their 40s on television are not being got rid of"
items: Jeremy Paxman on why he's trading news for comedy in this year's election

Jessie Burton: "If you want to get a job as an actor, write a novel. It’s a long audition process"
type: item
date: 2018-09-21T13:04:03.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The writer behind The Miniaturist talks fame, negative reviews and the inspiration behind her debut novel...
encoded: There was a moment during the filming of the BBC’s Christmas drama The Miniaturist when Jessie Burton found herself wondering if it was all really happening. Six years ago, she was working as a personal assistant in the City after struggling for years to make it as an actor, and decided to write a novel set in 17th-century Amsterdam featuring a mysterious doll’s house. Burton did several “unwieldy” drafts and wasn’t sure whether anyone would understand the point of it. But the manuscript became the subject of a bidding war and, on its publication in 2014, the novel became an instant bestseller that sold more than a million copies. Then the TV rights were snapped up and now it’s been made into a sumptuous two-part drama starring Romola Garai and newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy. The drama was filmed in Rotterdam and Essex and Burton herself appears as an extra in a scene set at a grand ball. Meet the cast of The Miniaturist Secrets of The Miniaturist’s cabinet house and dolls revealed BBC1’s The Miniaturist is a wonderfully unusual treat It was when she was in a trailer, getting her costume fitted, that Burton had the surreal experience of looking around her “and seeing all these actors with their wigs on and thinking, ‘I’ve conjured this up from my imagination’”. Burton shakes her head at the unexpected weirdness of it, aware of the irony of having written a book to get away from acting, only to end up with a small part in her own adaptation. “Yes,” she says, “the moral of the story is: if you want to get a job as an actor, write a novel. It’s a long audition process… Burton’s initial inspiration for The Miniaturist came courtesy of a 2009 mini-break with her then-boyfriend to Amsterdam. He suggested they visit the Rijksmuseum, and it was there that Burton stumbled across an elaborate doll’s house, made in 1686 for a Dutchwoman by the name of Petronella Oortman, who was married to a silk merchant. Burton was fascinated by the detail and artistry on display. “It was so intim…

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Wanderlust's Toni Collette: 'Someone told me I'm the first woman to have an orgasm on the BBC'
type: item
date: 2018-09-04T11:32:42.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The star of Hereditary and About a Boy discusses her role as Joy, a therapist, in Nick Payne's BBC drama Wanderlust
encoded: Toni Collette was recently informed she had reached a notable professional milestone. “Someone told me I was the first woman to have an orgasm on the BBC,” she says with a grin. “And I’m happy to take the accolade.” In Wanderlust, a six-part drama co-produced by the BBC and Netflix, Collette plays Joy Richards, a therapist trying to keep her relationship with her husband alive after a cycling accident makes her reassess their marriage. One of the opening scenes depicts Joy’s teenage son walking in as his mother is trying to masturbate. Later in the first episode, Joy has a sexual encounter in her consulting room that leads to the, ah, eventual climax. It’s fairly edgy fodder for the BBC and marks one of the first times that a middle-aged woman’s desires have been so frankly portrayed on screen. This was one of the things that attracted Collette to the part. “It’s so honest and fresh in the way the women are portrayed,” she explains. “To be a middle-aged woman, to be in a longterm relationship and to be alive, dealing with a lot of things – it’s tough. Certainly a middle-aged woman’s sense of self-esteem, of sexuality, is not often talked about.” When is BBC drama Wanderlust on TV? Meet the cast of Wanderlust Toni Collette drama Wanderlust has a wonderfully refreshing approach to sex and relationships View oEmbed on the source website Was she anxious about filming some of the more explicit scenes? “At first I was a little bit nervous but I got over it quite quickly. The more empathy I have with the character, the easier it is and it’s an important story – it’s representative of a big truth that’s got no real voice.” Like her character, Collette is middle-aged (45), she’s in a long-term marriage and she’s a mother – she has two children, Sage, aged ten, and seven-year-old Arlo. Unlike her character, she is a highly successful actor: after drama school in her native Sydney, her breakthrough role came at the age of 22 when she starred in the hit indie film Muriel’s Wedd…

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How realistic is new drama The Split on BBC1? Princess Diana's divorce lawyer separates the fact from fiction
type: item
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Divorce lawyer Sandra Davis' client list ranges from Princes Diana to Jerry Hall – so what does she think of Nicola Walker's depiction of a high-flying divorce lawyer?
encoded: There’s a scene in the first episode of BBC1 drama The Split, in which a man tells his wife he wants to break up. The couple are sitting around a glassy conference table in the flashy offices of legal firm Noble & Hale, and the wife (played by Meera Syal) is so taken aback, she knocks over a cup of coffee. The coffee ends up all over the expensive, dry-clean-only clothes of the expensive divorce lawyer, Hannah Stern (played by Nicola Walker). I’m watching the episode in the company of Sandra Davis, a real-life divorce lawyer, who’s worked for more than 30 years at Mishcon de Reya, one of the UK’s leading law firms. Have hot drinks ever been spilled over her? “I had a sugar bowl thrown at me once,” she says matter-of-factly. In The Split, Hannah rushes to the ladies’ toilet after the coffee incident and mops herself with a wet wipe. View oEmbed on the source website When does The Split start on BBC1? Meet the cast of divorce drama The Split By contrast, Davis remained resolutely unflustered when crockery shattered and sugar cubes tumbled onto the floor. “I said, ‘I think we should take a break.’” Davis recalls, with perfect sang-froid. “The thing is, it’s not about me. To be able to function in this area of the law, you have to be calm. You have to disengage your own baggage, if you have any.” As head of Mishcon’s family law division, Davis has negotiated the break-ups of several high-profile and high-net-worth individuals. She represented Princess Diana during her divorce from Prince Charles, supermodel Jerry Hall in her split from Mick Jagger, footballer Thierry Henry, and fashion tycoon Tamara Mellon, co-founder of Jimmy Choo. And those are only the ones we know about – Davis is frustratingly discreet. She won’t even confirm her hourly rates, but doesn’t dispute it’s somewhere north of £600. The gender make-up of the drama is a reflection of the real-life world of divorce law, which is overwhelmingly female. In a survey of the legal profession conducted by Spear’s…

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Bake Off is back – but has Paul Hollywood forgiven Prue Leith for last year's accidental tweet?
type: item
date: 2018-08-28T19:00:41.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
description: It’s been a long hot summer in the tent – but the judges are keeping cool for The Great British Bake Off 2018
encoded: Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood are sitting outside, enjoying the hot London summer. Paul has shuffled under the shade provided by the table umbrella. Next to him, Prue is splayed out glamorously across her chair, soaking up every ray of sunshine she can. Since taking over from Mary Berry on The Great British Bake Off last year, Leith says that the most frequent question posed by faithful viewers who stop her in the street is, “Why don’t you bronze up a bit so that you don’t look like a pale judge next to the perma-tan prince?” “That’s why you’re always sunbathing, is it?” Hollywood asks. “Yes, I’m nearly there,” Leith bats back, closing her eyes like a cat and angling her face towards the sun. The duo are about to return to our screens, in varying shades of perma-tan, to front the ninth series of Bake Off. It will be Leith’s second stint inside the bakers’ tent after the programme moved from the BBC to Channel 4 last year, in what was quite possibly one of the most controversial moments in our national history. Prue Leith reveals Channel 4’s strategy for preventing Bake Off spoilers in the new series Liam Charles made his judging debut on Bake Off: the Professionals – and viewers loved it When is The Great British Bake Off 2018 back on TV? View oEmbed on the source website There was a collective outcry over Hollywood supposedly “selling out” when he announced his intention to carry on being a judge. Mary Berry and presenters Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc all stepped down, the latter two claiming in a statement they were “not going with the dough”. Leith was baffled by all the fuss. “I hadn’t watched Bake Off. I had no idea it was the nation’s favourite programme… It just didn’t cross my mind that I would be in it. And so it wasn’t until I was cast that I realised – and started reading all the press stuff – that this was a highly dangerous thing to be doing. I was about to be the cause of the nation’s grief!” She’s joking, of course, but it’s true that no one expected …

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'I’m not the perfect Muslim, I'm not the perfect Brit: I'm just being me': Bake Off's Nadiya Hussain talks living in the spotlight ahead of her new BBC cookery show
type: item
date: 2018-07-16T10:20:18.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Great British Bake Off's 2015 winner brings a feast of fresh ideas to Nadiya’s Family Favourites
encoded: Nadiya Hussain’s three children have no idea what their mum’s job is. They know vaguely that it’s something to do with television and baking cakes and writing things. But when someone recently asked her 11-year-old son what his mother did, he replied without missing a beat: “She lives her dreams.” Hussain smiles as she tells the story. “And I was like, ‘You know what?… That means to me one day they’re going to go and live their dreams. What more can a mum want?’ I don’t care what they do as long as they’re happy doing it.” You can understand her elder son’s confusion. Hussain has had a dizzying three years. She won the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off in 2015, a victory watched by 13.4 million, approximately 13.3 million of whom were moved to tears by her rousing victory speech: “I’m never gonna say, ‘I don’t think I can,’” she said at the time. “I can and I will.” Nadiya Hussain quits The Big Family Cooking Showdown after just one series The Big Family Cooking Showdown hosts and judges share their favourite home recipes RadioTimes.com newsletter: get the latest TV and entertainment news direct to your inbox Overnight, Hussain became a new kind of role model. She was young, modern, British and also a hijab-wearing Muslim woman of colour who grew up one of six children in a working-class Bangladeshi community in Luton and had an arranged marriage at the age of 20. On screen, she was an infectiously warm presence, and a move into presenting seemed the natural progression. Since then, she’s fronted several food programmes, including a BBC2 series last year called Nadiya’s British Food Adventure, and was chosen to bake the Queen’s 90th birthday cake. She’s also got a novel and five cookbooks to her name. View oEmbed on the source website The latest, Nadiya’s Family Favourites, was published in June and Hussain, 33, is now launching an accompanying television series, featuring a selection of recipes that mix together the best bits of several cultures. Growing u…

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Picnic at Hanging Rock star Natalie Dormer: "I had no desire to get into a corset again”
type: item
date: 2018-07-11T13:22:49.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Game of Thrones' Natalie Dormer talks costume dramas, getting older and the lack of complex female characters
encoded: Last February, Natalie Dormer found herself in Australia, in searing heat, wearing a corset, a hat, a veil and a period gown made of wool. She was filming for the new six-part drama, Picnic at Hanging Rock, in which she plays a headmistress haunted by her past, and the opening scene required her to do several seven minute takes in 35°C heat. Beneath the make-up and costume, Dormer was sweating. It was, essentially, Bikram Acting. “I think sometimes people forget that acting is a cardiovascular exercise,” the 36-year-old says when we meet in the air-conditioned splendour of a BBC conference room. “You don’t want to be anywhere near me when I take my corset off because it’s gonna honk.” View oEmbed on the source website Still, it was worth suffering for her art. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dormer delivers a brilliantly nuanced performance as Hester Appleyard, a traumatised woman who is trying to reinvent herself on the other side of the world at the turn of the 20th century. The series is an adaptation of a 1967 novel by Australian writer Joan Lindsay, which was also adapted for the big screen in 1975 by Peter Weir. It tells the story of a group of adolescent schoolgirls who go missing in the Australian bush after a sunny Valentine’s Day picnic at the titular scenic spot. Headmistress Hester is pitched into a feverish world of speculation as the ripple effects of the unsolved mystery begin to spread. The series is directed by the Canadian Larysa Kondracki, who gives the whole thing a lush, magical, almost punk-rock quality. “People’s imaginations run wild when they think of a group of three young girls and a teacher going missing,” Dormer says. “Is it murder? Is it abuse? Is it dying of malnutrition in the middle of the outback? Have they run away? Your imagination just takes you there.” First look at Natalie Dormer in new TV series Picnic at Hanging Rock Natalie Dormer knew about her Game of Thrones death a year before everyone else Everything we know about Game of Th…

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The Affair star Ruth Wilson on the gender pay gap and new movie Dark River
type: item
date: 2018-02-23T09:00:43.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: The actress won a Golden Globe for her role in The Affair – but feels certain her male co-star was paid more than her
encoded: Ruth Wilson is talking about how to castrate a lamb. “You take an elastic band and you put it over the balls,” she explains. “Then you just let go. The elastic band works its magic, and they shrivel up and drop off.” She says all this in a no-nonsense sort of way, sitting on a sofa next to a table full of croissants in the offices of a central London PR agency. It’s a fairly surreal mismatch of setting and subject, but Wilson seems unflustered. As an actress, the 36-year-old Wilson is nothing if not versatile. On the small screen, she won plaudits as Alice in the BBC’s hit psychological crime drama Luther and, since 2014, has played Alison, the “other woman”, in Showtime’s acclaimed The Affair. For the latter, Wilson put on a note-perfect American accent and won a Golden Globe – she returns in the fourth season later this year. On stage, Wilson’s riveting portrayals of complex women – from Anna Christie to Hedda Gabler – have won her two Olivier Awards. Ruth Wilson to star as her own grandmother in new BBC1 drama about her family’s secrets Hedda Gabler review: Ruth Wilson is extraordinary in this bold Ibsen Her latest role sees her starring in Dark River, the third feature film from The Selfish Giant writer/director Clio Barnard. Wilson plays Alice, who returns to her home village in Yorkshire following the death of her father (Sean Bean) in order to claim the tenancy to the family farm she believes is rightfully hers. Alice is haunted by the sexual abuse she endured as a child, and her homecoming is plagued by post-traumatic flashbacks and outbursts of violence from her troubled brother, Joe (Mark Stanley). View oEmbed on the source website Sheep break their legs, rats infest the farmhouse and the weather remains relentlessly bleak throughout. It’s a bit like The Archers, as rewritten by a terminal pessimist. But the film is lifted by Wilson’s performance, in which every nuance of emotion plays across her features. She has a very expressive face: clear blue eyes th…

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Kit Harington on Game of Thrones fame, his ancestry and what he’d do if he were prime minister for a day
type: item
date: 2017-10-21T08:00:33.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Game of Thrones star was born to play the lead in a drama about the Gunpowder Plot, and he’s got the DNA – and the hair – to prove it
encoded: Kit Harington’s hair is a thing of wonder. The actor, who for the past seven years has played Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, is famed for his shoulder-length barnet. A cursory internet search returns nearly two million hits. There are GoT fansites devoted to analysing whether the precise inflection of Harington’s hair might hint at possible plot twists. There are photoshopped images showing what he might look like with a shaved head. There are style guides on how to achieve his tousled curls (“While blow-drying, use your fingers to twirl strands and get that curling action going”). Harington, 30, finds it all a bit mystifying. “It’s bizarre,” he says, sitting in a light-filled room in east London, dressed all in black and sporting a pair of owlish spectacles. He confesses he’s looking forward to a haircut once the next, final, season has filmed, “but I have to keep it like this until then”. Luckily, in the meantime he’s found another role that requires a healthy head of hair. In BBC1’s three-part drama Gunpowder, about the 1605 plot to blow up Parliament, Harington plays the ringleader Robert Catesby and his hair is long, luscious and reassuringly 17th century. “I looked at pictures of Catesby and, well, I can’t deny he had a beard and long hair,” says Harington, who is also an executive producer. But the connection went beyond the purely follicular: Catesby is one of Harington’s ancestors on his mother’s side. He grew up in Acton, west London, being told by his parents all about the nefarious activities of his forebear. And Catesby is his middle name. It was Catesby who led the plan to bomb the House of Lords in protest at King James I of England’s relentless persecution of Catholics. Catesby’s co-conspirators included Guy Fawkes, who was arrested guarding barrels of explosive after an anonymous tip-off. The foiled plot is still commemorated every year on Bonfire Night, when effigies of Fawkes are burned. Harington couldn’t understand why the story of his ancestor ha…

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Love Island is like Shakespeare with a suntan
type: item
date: 2017-07-14T09:00:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: Reality TV
subject: TV
description: From the language to the romance, Love Island's slice of reality television could actually make us more civilised, argues Elizabeth Day
encoded: The world is divided into two types of people: those who adore ITV2’s Love Island, and those who abhor it and believe that watching it hastens the decline of civilisation. I fall into the former category because the latter group is, well, wrong. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that watching Love Island can actually make you more civilised. It is reality television at its most naive: think back to the first series of Big Brother and you have something of the flavour of it. Admittedly, the show’s premise might sound tacky on paper: a group of random, swimwear-clad strangers are plonked in a telegenic holiday villa and are encouraged to “couple up”, which involves sharing a bed and possibly allowing romance to develop. The public then vote to keep their favourite pairing in the villa. The last couple standing scoops a £50,000 cash prize. But the amazing thing about Love Island is that most of the contestants seem to forget about both the cash and the cameras almost as soon as they walk in the villa. They start talking, utterly sincerely, about wanting to find “the one” and “someone who gives me butterflies” and you realise that, ultimately, we are all engaged on this endless quest to be understood. It’s the kind of narrative that has obsessed us since time immemorial. It’s why we’re still riveted by the work of Jane Austen or Shakespeare: because we are all searching for someone who helps us make sense of ourselves. Of course there’s lots of fake tan and white teeth and preposterous, silicone-enhanced body types, and the occasional night-time shuffle under the sheets. But at its heart, Love Island is a show about people forming relationships – romantic ones, yes, but also platonic ones. In fact, one of the most appealing things about Love Island is that the contestants are, by and large, nice to each other. One of the most enduring partnerships this series has been between two men: Kem, a hairdresser from Essex who appears to be approximately 4ft 2in, and Chris, a “go…

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How well do Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield actually know each other?
type: item
date: 2017-06-29T06:00:00.000Z
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: We put the This Morning presenting duo to the Newlywed Game test...
encoded: They present This Morning together four days a week. They've won a host of TV awards. But are they really best friends? There's only one way to find out: subject the pair to an in-depth quiz on each other... Holly on Phil 1. What colour are his eyes? Holly Oh my… I look at him every day and I really don’t know! Hazely-brown?! Phil Green. 2. His most annoying habit? Holly Tidying my stuff. I just leave everything lying around. Phil I really don’t think there’s anything she’s mentioned that annoys her. 3. Which soap is he addicted to? Holly He’s a Corrie fan. Phil Corrie. View oEmbed on the source website 4. What would he choose as a final meal? Holly This is one of our favourite games! He’s going for a soft-shell crab starter, steak with peppercorn sauce and a cheese board for dessert. Phil A seafood starter of some sort, a really good steak and — I don’t have a sweet tooth — so probably cheese. 5. Ultimate TV detective? Holly Cumberbatch. Phil Sherlock. 6. His perfect holiday destination? Holly He has a house out in Portugal, where they go every year, so probably there. Phil We’ve both got homes out in Portugal and have had the best times there all together, so I’d say there. 7. Perfect evening? Holly We both like a takeaway on the sofa. Phil I’d probably say drinking on the sofa. 8. Secret phobia? Holly He’s not scared of anything but he can’t eat egg whites. Phil I’m not scared of anything. Phil and Holly at this year's NTA awards Phil on Holly 1. What colour are her eyes? Phil Blue? Holly Green. 2. What’s her most annoying habit? Phil She goes, “Well…” to fill silences but she doesn’t actually have anything to say. Holly Umm… that! I need to fill silences so I will just say “Umm…” even though I have absolutely nothing to say! 3. Soap addiction? Phil Corrie. Holly Corrie. 4. What would she choose as a final meal? Phil We’ve played this! Something classic like prawn cocktail, roast chicken and then anything with chocolate for desert. Holly Classic prawn cocktail, r…

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What do Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby really think of each other?
type: item
date: 2017-06-26T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The This Morning presenting duo also talk corpsing and THAT hungover show after the NTAs
encoded: The world can be a dreary place. Forecasts of economic doom. Predictions of global apocalypse. An orange-hued former reality television star in charge of the nuclear codes. That kind of thing. But when you’re feeling a bit down about the state we’re in, there are few better ways of picking yourself up than typing “Phil and Holly Funny Bits” into YouTube. It will bring up more than 5,000 video compilations of Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby dissolving into giggles at regular interludes as they present ITV’s flagship daytime show, This Morning. Their laughter is chaotic and unpredictable, generally occasioned by an innocent double entendre, like the time chef Gino d’Acampo cooked sausage-in-the-hole or when they had to introduce an item about Gwyneth Paltrow’s “tidy pantry”. View oEmbed on the source website “They’re never planned,” Schofield says when we meet one morning just after the duo have come off air. We’re sitting in a cramped dressing room backstage at the ITV studios on London’s South Bank and both of them are still in their on-screen make-up: faces inch-deep in powder and fake tan. “Because we have the same sense of humour, it works at the same speed. We think the same thing, more or less, we laugh at the same stuff. So, you know, if you write in a script anything about Gwyneth Paltrow’s tidy pantry, it’s going to get us both at the same time.” “It’s going to tip you over the edge,” Willoughby agrees, sitting next to him on a low sofa, sipping on a cup of tea. “And then one goes and it makes the other one worse and then that makes the other one worse,” adds Schofield. “So it builds.” “And suddenly you just can’t remember what you’re giggling about,” concludes Willoughby. View oEmbed on the source website They’re laughing again now, egging each other on. It seems they genuinely can’t help it. Sometimes, she will give him “a little nudge” when there’s a “slightly naughty or slightly rude” phrase in the script. Today, it happened when she had to say “t…

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James Norton on Christmas in Grantchester: "There are bad jumpers, snow and an impending birth..."
type: item
date: 2017-06-18T00:00:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Happy Valley and War and Peace actor looks back on a stellar 2016 – and addresses those James Bond rumours
encoded: Over the summer, James Norton found himself filming scenes for a forthcoming movie by a lake in a remote part of northern Canada. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a boat being rowed across the water. The boat stopped abruptly as it got close to him. The woman at the helm pointed at him and said, semi-accusingly, “You’re the vicar!” It was, Norton admits, slightly surreal to be recognised on the other side of the world for his part in Grantchester, the hit ITV 1950s detective series in which he plays crime-solving Anglican vicar Sidney Chambers. It’s a mark of just how popular Norton has become, with Grantchester regularly attracting six million viewers in the UK and also airing on PBS in the States. Now it’s returning for a one-off Christmas special that, Norton promises, will feature “bad jumpers and church services, snow and an impending birth... it’s perfect for Christmas.” Today, we are meeting on set in the distinctly unglamorous location of Whipsnade Zoo car park. Norton, 31, has just come into the canteen bus from filming a scene in which Sidney engages in “this really great big epic theological discussion” with his archdeacon. He’s still wearing his full vicar’s regalia: starched shirt and a dog collar that looks slightly too small for his neck. “Yeah, it’s actually really uncomfortable,” Norton says, struggling to unbutton it. I stare. “You’re fascinated by the clothes, aren’t you?” I am. I can’t help it. It’s not often you see such a handsome man in clerical robes. Norton has an easy, engaging manner and a foppish charm. When he smiles, his eyes crinkle in an altogether pleasing fashion. He has long dimples on either side of his mouth. His jaw is so square it could fit through a letterbox. The last time a clergyman was this good-looking, it was Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds. James Norton as Sidney Chambers in the Grantchester Christmas special Unsurprisingly, rumours have been swirling that he might be the new James Bond. So... is he? “I hav…

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Fearless star Helen McCrory: "We’re all pioneers as women now because there’s no blueprint"
type: item
date: 2017-06-12T16:14:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Harry Potter actor also talks mistaking her OBE for a parking ticket and how husband Damian Lewis convinced her to join her new ITV drama
encoded: Helen McCrory arrives in the north London pub where we have agreed to meet wearing checked trousers and a peaked flat cap to keep the sun off her face. She speaks rapidly as if struggling to match the pace of her own thoughts. The whole impression is that of an energetic Victorian chimney sweep or an extra from Oliver Twist. At first, I don’t even recognise her. But then, she has always been a chameleon, an actress capable of feats of transformation. At 48, her CV is testament to her range: she was Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Medea on stage and is about to reprise her role as Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders (the cap she’s wearing was actually borrowed from the set). Her latest incarnation is as the lead in ITV’s new political thriller, Fearless, scripted by Homeland writer Patrick Harbinson. McCrory plays Emma Banville, a campaigning lawyer who fights to free a man she believes was wrongfully convicted of killing a schoolgirl. View oEmbed on the source website RT: What drew you to the role? HM: Patrick got in contact with me and said, “We’ve written something for you.” And I read it. I loved the fact that you could tell he’d been writing in America for so long. It just eats plot, like the American dramas do: plot is king and you kill a storyline in 60 minutes that in British drama would often take six hours to do. And I really like Emma. I like the fact that she cares about other things more than herself. And in such a narcissistic culture it’s really nice to read a character who actually does put other things in front of them. Emma has no children and you get the sense she’s devoted herself so much to her work that she hasn’t found the right time for motherhood. Was that an important part of her character? I liked that Patrick wrote her as a person rather than necessarily as a woman. Through the series, she wants to adopt a child and there’s a vulnerability there. I know from friends of mine that it’s very hard to have children later in life. I think we…

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Poldark's Aidan Turner: People are a little scared to approach me in public – and I'm happy with that
type: item
date: 2017-06-11T06:20:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The BBC1 star admits he thinks he has "a leave-me-alone kind of face" when not on set – but that he dearly loves being back in the saddle for Poldark series three
encoded: Aidan Turner doesn’t want to talk about his love life. But there comes a point in our conversation when he simply can’t help himself. He has, he admits, grown very close to a Poldark co-star. The two of them have just finished filming three series together and have developed an intimate bond. “Our relationship certainly has matured,” Turner says, before paying tribute to his co-star’s “sensitivity”. Truly, he can’t imagine his life without Seamus the horse. Like the 33-year-old Turner, Seamus the horse hails from Ireland. The two of them have been together since filming their very first scene. “I talk to him all the time,” says Turner. “I rarely use any other horses unless Seamus isn’t around for some reason, [because] I understand how he works and I guess he understands how I work.” View oEmbed on the source website In fact, Turner has a lot to thank Seamus for: he had never really ridden before auditioning for the role of the brooding, swarthy Ross Poldark. He blagged his way through with the producers in order to get the gig. He did so with such aplomb that, these days, it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else in the part. As Poldark, the handsome captain who returned to his native Cornwall after fighting in the American War of Independence, Turner is moody and magnetic and has turned furrowing his brow into an art form. He’s tricky to read and yet we root for him, even when he acts in unlikeable ways. The second series stoked controversy with a scene between Poldark and former fiancée Elizabeth Warleggan (Heida Reed) that some critics claimed was “legitimising rape”. But by the end of the run, Poldark was happily reunited with his wife Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson), while the newly remarried Elizabeth discovered she was pregnant with a baby that might or might not be her husband’s. “He has ups and downs,” agrees Turner, “He’s difficult to be around.” Turner is understandably sick of talking about his pectorals. When he stripped to the waist to do a spot of sc…

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Joan Bakewell tells her side of the story about her affair with Harold Pinter
type: item
date: 2017-04-22T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: audio
description: In response to Pinter’s hit 1978 play Betrayal, which chronicled their relationship, Bakewell wrote Keeping in Touch – which is to be aired on Radio 4
encoded: When Joan Bakewell embarked on an eight-year affair with the playwright Harold Pinter in the 1960s, she never suspected he would make a play out of it. But then he wrote Betrayal and sent it to Bakewell for her comments. Her first response was horror. “I was really deeply shocked because it used my private life,” she says, talking to me in the upstairs sitting room of her four-storey north London home. “It was so close to our affair.” By 1978, when Betrayal opened, both Pinter and Bakewell were happily ensconced in new relationships and had remained friends. But the play upset Bakewell because he hadn’t told her he was writing it. She asked him to change the title, which she felt was “accusatory”, but he refused. It became a critical and commercial success and was later adapted for the screen. Bakewell, meanwhile, kept her silence for almost half a century, during which she became a revered broadcaster, writer and a Dame of the British Empire. Pinter died in 2008. Today, at the age of 84, Bakewell has decided the time is right to have her say. Keeping in Touch, a 45-minute drama that she wrote in the 1970s as an immediate riposte to Pinter’s work, will be aired for the first time on Radio 4 this week. It’s about a married woman with children who starts questioning her life, and looks at how Bakewell’s affair came about. The play was originally written, she says, “for my own satisfaction” in a fit of “intensity” and was almost a cathartic exercise. Then she put it away and forgot about it. Pinter and Bakewell on Late Night Line-Up in 1969 It was only when Bakewell was sorting through her archives recently that she came across her play again. What does she think Pinter would have made of it? There is a pause. “Harold would not be very pleased.” Still, in spite of everything, she remembers Pinter with great affection and considers herself “bloody lucky” to have conducted an affair for the best part of a decade while also enjoying a family life with her first husband, t…

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Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall: “Why am I walking away from the two best actors in the country?”
type: item
date: 2017-02-27T08:00:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The writer confesses to his second thoughts on ending the series
encoded: Chris Chibnall loves a whiteboard. When he started writing Broadchurch, which is set in Dorset, where he lives, he wanted it to last for three series, involve multiple storylines and have myriad plot-twists and surprising character developments. And that required a lot of planning. “I have four giant whiteboards and a brilliant script editor,” says Chibnall. “We storyline everything and then start with the characters... When you plot an hour-long episode, you have to do it very tightly in four acts around the ad breaks.” Why did he focus on a violent sexual assault? “Because often it’s not treated with the time or delicacy it deserves,” he says. “What I did was to deliberately slow the pace down because I wanted to go into detail of how you report an attack.” Chris Chibnall and Olivia Colman at the Radio Times Covers Party Did he find it hard to shake off the subject matter? “Once I step away from the computer, I hope I’ve given everything to it — like a footballer leaving everything on the pitch. The emotion goes into the show.” Did he expect Broadchurch to be such a success? “No! No idea. Any success is not in our hands, it’s in the hands of the audience — they decide what they want to talk about.” And how does he feel on the eve of the final series? “Very emotional. It’s hard to say goodbye. I’ve asked myself, ‘Why am I walking away from the two best actors in the country?’” Does Chibnall have a favourite scene? “Yeah, but I can’t tell you what it is,” he laughs. “It’s late in this series, it’s very moving and it’s the biggest scene we’ve ever done.” So we’ll know it when we see it? “Yes,” he says. Until then, like so much else around Broadchurch, it remains a closely guarded secret. Broadchurch begins at 9pm tonight on ITV

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Christina Ricci: I would never have got to play Zelda Fitzgerald if I hadn’t cast myself
type: item
date: 2017-02-06T13:27:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Addams Family actor has grown up – with an attitude
encoded: Christina Ricci is small but fearsome. She sits in a London hotel room, her tiny frame swamped by the felt upholstered sofa, and looks at me with wide, piercing eyes, like a meerkat about to pounce on an unsuspecting insect beetling across the Namib desert. If a question is deemed overly simplistic, she dispatches it with an unflinching gaze and a one line response. When I ask her how she mastered the Alabama accent for her role as Zelda Fitzgerald in Z: the Beginning of Everything, she shrugs. “I mean, you know, it’s an accent.” View oEmbed on the source website Ricci doesn’t much like interviews. And she’s done more than her fair share. She became famous at the age of nine, when she co-starred in Mermaids alongside Cher and Winona Ryder. A bevy of critically acclaimed film roles followed – Wednesday in The Addams Family; the sexually curious adolescent in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm – so that by the time she was a teenager, Ricci was sick of the promotional rigmarole of hotel room Q&A sessions. “I was 14 and I was being criticised, analysed, examined and asked very pointed questions,” she says now. “I was so uncomfortable I lashed out.” She made some deliberately wild statements – that it was “natural” to have sex with one’s parents; that she wasn’t afraid to die and so on – just to shake things up. She felt “hostile” towards the world. These days, she’s more pragmatic. She still finds interviews “difficult” but she no longer measures herself according to whether she feels she’s failed or succeeded at them. I suspect she just gets bored. View oEmbed on the source website At 36, Ricci is one of the most ferociously smart and interesting actors I’ve ever interviewed. Her brain is quick; her thought processes unexpected. If she doesn’t agree with something you’ve said, or if she thinks your reasoning is lazy, she will tell you so. It proves to be less of an interview, more of a university tutorial. So it’s not surprising she’s done a lot of research for her latest role, …

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The Missing's David Morrissey: Television was my education, much more than school
type: item
date: 2016-10-12T13:10:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The Walking Dead star takes over from James Nesbitt in the second series of BBC1 crime drama The Missing
encoded: David Morrissey is very serious. Really terribly serious. He walks into the London hotel where we’re meeting with the demeanour of someone thinking profound thoughts. When he smiles, he looks immediately affronted by the actions of his own face. When he talks about enjoying television he can “tune out of ” and I blithely ask him what his “guilty pleasure” is, he peers over at me as if from a great distance. “I don’t believe in guilty pleasures at all, really,” the 52-year-old Morrissey says sadly. “Any pleasure is pleasure.” Oh dear, I think. This is going to be as much fun as a wet weekend in the Kensington area of Liverpool where he was born and raised. To be fair, he is here to talk about starring in the second series of The Missing, in which he plays a soldier called Sam Webster whose daughter has suddenly reappeared after 11 years in captivity. His on-screen wife is played by Keeley Hawes. View oEmbed on the source website The first series, starring James Nesbitt as a traumatised parent of a missing child and written by brothers Harry and Jack Williams, was so grippingly realistic that many parents couldn’t bring themselves to watch it. “Yes, I guess, there are a lot of parents out there,” says Morrissey, who has three children aged 21, 18 and 12 with his wife, the novelist Esther Freud. “Children in danger is always very, you know… We can get very weirded out by all that.” As research for his role, Morrissey immersed himself in books about real-life kidnapping cases (“all the Josef Fritzl stuff ”, the Austrian who kept his daughter captive in his cellar for 24 years) and had to wear a prosthetic scar on his back, which took two hours to apply on set each morning. Over the last few years Morrissey, who is probably best known for his roles in State of Play, Red Riding and Thorne, has played the villainous Governor in The Walking Dead and a hangman in Martin McDonagh’s acclaimed play, Hangmen, at the Royal Court. Morrissey as the Governor in The Walking Dead No w…

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Emily Blunt on sexist casting calls and why she hates to be judged by her looks
type: item
date: 2016-10-07T07:00:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: The Girl on the Train star speaks out against Hollywood's double standards
encoded: When Emily Blunt was cast as the lead in The Girl on the Train there was concern that she wasn’t right for the job. Paula Hawkins’s bestselling thriller, on which the film is based, features an overweight, addled alcoholic protagonist called Rachel whose life is falling apart after a marital breakdown. Blunt, who doesn’t exactly have a face like the back end of a bus (or, indeed, a train) was described by Hawkins as simply “too beautiful” to play the role. Luckily, the wardrobe and make-up departments were on hand. Blunt, 33, had prosthetic under-eye bags applied every day, along with a smattering of rosacea colouring and fake varicose veins. “I had a full contact lens that covered my whole eye to give that look as though your eyes are bloodshot,” she says, when we meet in a London hotel. “There was a pink one and there was the incredibly raging red eye for a drunk look and the hungover, yellow, sallowed sort of eye.” View oEmbed on the source website Today Blunt’s eyes are free of lenses and sparkling blue. Her hair is blonde and shiny. She is wearing an impeccably tailored blue and maroon dress. There’s not a varicose vein in sight. As Rachel, Blunt spends much of the movie wearing a baggy tweed coat. “Isn’t that the ugliest coat you’ve ever seen in your life?” she asks me. Yes, I say, without hesitation. “When [costume designer] Ann Roth handed it to me, I just thought, ‘It’s over. It’s over. I’ll never get a beauty campaign after this.’” She also had to wear an ill-fitting trouser suit, although when Blunt talks about it she says “pant suit” without flinching. She grew up as the second of four children in Roehampton, south west London. Her father, Oliver, is a QC and her mother, Joanna, a former actress, but Blunt took US citizenship last year. It made sense, she says, because her husband, the actor and director John Krasinski, is American and she needs to be there a lot for career reasons. Emily Blunt and John Krasinski on the red carpet of The Girl On The Trai…

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Mamie Gummer on The Collection and her mother, Meryl Streep
type: item
date: 2016-09-02T05:31:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Drama
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The actress was born to act and follow in Mum’s footsteps
encoded: Mamie Gummer’s favourite memory of her mother dates from when she was 13 and had got dressed up as Charlie Chaplin for a Halloween party. She remembers it because it was her first Halloween as a teen, around the time that you start growing up and begin discovering truths about life, such as “finding out that Santa Claus isn’t real”. Her mother drove her to the party. But when they arrived, Gummer was horrified to see that no one else was dressed up. Her friends were all wearing normal clothes and “flirting with boys”. Gummer, sitting in the passenger seat, felt suddenly humiliated by her own immaturity. And that was when her mother stepped in. “Mum, without blinking, gave me her leather jacket, put it on over the costume and wiped my make-up off,” says Gummer now, nearly 20 years later. “It was that transition [from childhood to adulthood] that’s so difficult for kids, made within the space of 20 minutes. And she was there on both sides of it. She’s a great mother.” Mamie Gummer, Rick Springfield and Meryl Streep She is also, it should be said, Meryl Streep. Gummer, 33, is the second of Streep’s four children with the sculptor Don Gummer. It’s hard enough having one of the most famous women in the world as your parent, but now that Gummer is an actress in her own right, with her latest role in the hotly anticipated Amazon Prime drama The Collection, it becomes even more awkward. Did she ever want to do anything other than act? “If I had, I would have done it,” Gummer says drily. As it was, she grew up in Salisbury, Connecticut, a first-hand witness to her mother’s success. The year she was born, Streep won her first best actress Oscar for Sophie’s Choice. When she was two, her mother was starring in Out of Africa. By the time Gummer was 12, Streep was in The Bridges of Madison County. And that’s before you even get to Streep’s roles in The Hours, The Devil Wears Prada, The Iron Lady or Mamma Mia!. Gummer, by contrast, has had a quieter ascent. She started out in sch…

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Remembering the imagination of Roald Dahl
type: item
date: 2016-07-02T09:16:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Documentaries
subject: News
subject: Radio
subject: TV
subject: audio
description: Lucy Dahl talks about her father, Roald – parent, writer and secret agent
encoded: Lucy Dahl has many precious memories of her father, Roald. The beloved children’s author, who was born 100 years ago this September, believed “boredom was a curse”. To get his children to eat their greens, he would claim that cabbage had been delivered by a Buckingham Palace footman. In the mornings, he would drive them to school still wearing his nightshirt and cap. Sometimes he would wake them up in the middle of the night to go on the hunt for badgers. “He always liked children more than adults,” Lucy recalls. “He used to say, ‘I have the same sense of humour.’” It was this capacity for thinking on their wavelength that made Roald Dahl one of the world’s best-loved children’s authors. The life of the dark comic genius behind classics such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG and Matilda is to be celebrated in a season of programmes kicking off on Radio 4 this Saturday with Roald Dahl – Boy, dramatised tales from the writer's own childhood. A BBC2 documentary at the end of July will form the centrepiece. Perhaps Lucy’s most lasting image of her father is not of the fantastical storyteller, admiration for whom she shared with the world, but an intimate memory of him as a much older man, lying in a hospital bed at the age of 74, suffering from a blood disease that would prove to be fatal. “I had two young children at the time,” Lucy recalls when we meet in a central London private members’ club. “My youngest, Chloë, was two months old. I was in Dad’s room and said, ‘I have to go and feed the baby,’ and he said, ‘All right.’ I gave him a kiss, walked to the door and he said, ‘Lucy.’ I turned around and he said, ‘Take care of your children.’” They were the last words he would ever say to her. She wells up at the memory. He died 26 years ago, but she still speaks to him “all the time. I can always find him when I need him. More so than when he was alive. I meditate every day, ask him for guidance and ask him questions.” And does he have the answers? She smiles…

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Piers Morgan: “Self-doubt is a massively tiresome virtue. I don’t really get the point of it”
type: item
date: 2015-11-24T05:00:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: As the journalist joins Good Morning Britain, he talks to Radio Times about guilt, Catholicism and why he'd rather "get a large anvil and smash it repeatedly on my head" than go into politics
encoded: Piers Morgan is keen to tell me about his great skin. “I’m in the top 18th percentile,” he says proudly, jutting his chin forward across the restaurant table so that I can better examine his pores. “And I’ve never had any work done. No Botox, nothing.” When he first moved to Los Angeles to take over the Larry King interview slot on CNN in 2010, Morgan visited a dermatologist. The way Morgan tells the story (which is effectively the way he tells every story: painting himself as the hero of events) the dermatologist informed him there was nothing that could be improved. “I’ve never moisturised!” Morgan, 50, says gleefully when we meet in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. It’s true that his skin is the smooth, pink- hued texture of a baby-faced Englishman abroad. He says Joan Collins once told him the secret to good skin was staying out of direct sunlight. Morgan will be able to do a lot more of this in future because he is returning to the UK as part of the presenting team for ITV’s flagship break- fast show, Good Morning Britain. Morgan will be co-hosting the show with Susanna Reid three days a week, splitting his time between LA and London. Is he a morning person? “I am actually, yeah. I’ve always been good in the morning. Up early. My high-energy moments are normally in the morning. I’ve been getting good practice because my daughter has the most unbelievably bad sleeping pattern,” he says, referring to four-year-old Elise, his child with his wife, the journalist and author Celia Walden (he also has three sons from his first marriage). In fact, Morgan has worked out that the latest possible time he can set his alarm for will be 3.26am. “Military precision,” he says, pouring himself tea from a white china pot. For all his good cheer, it is hard not to think of this as some sort of comedown. When Morgan was hired by CNN and made the permanent move to the US, he was hailed in the American press as “the new king on the block” and expected to attract stellar ratings with his …

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Emma Willis: "It’s great that women in their 40s on television are not being got rid of"
type: item
date: 2015-06-13T06:35:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Entertainment
subject: News
subject: TV
description: From MTV to Saturday nights at the BBC, how did Emma Willis hit the big time?
encoded: When Emma Willis was growing up, she thought she’d end up working in a hospital. She laughs when she describes herself as a teenager at school in Sutton Coldfield in the Midlands: “I had a blonde perm, brown eye shadow up to my eyebrows and I loved Bros. That was me.” Now, though, the perm is long gone and Willis is one of several female presenters – including Tess Daly, Claudia Winkleman, Caroline Flack and Holly Willoughby – dominating the Saturday-night schedules. But back then, television just didn’t seem like a real job. Willis’s father, Steve, was a postman and her mother, Cathy, an auxiliary nurse on a labour ward. Presenting primetime TV programmes was about as far away from her daily life as the idea of walking on the Moon. “I never thought it would happen to someone like me,” she says now, sitting in a brightly lit café in north London next to the studio where she has just had her Radio Timesphotoshoot. “I wanted to do what my mum did. I love blood and guts, I’m fascinated by it.” Her bright blue eyes sparkle unexpectedly at the thought of entrails and gruesome operations. Despite her ghoulish preoccupations, Willis was never destined for a job in surgical scrubs. At the age of 17, she was signed by Models 1 after a friend of her mother’s suggested she should give it a go. She moved to west London and was put up in a flat in Fulham with several fresh-faced wannabes. After ten years of modelling for GAP, Chanel, Vogue and Elle, she was hired by MTV and made the jump into TV presenting. At first, she found it ludicrous. “I felt silly saying things!” she recalls. “I was terrified, do you know what I mean?” At one point, a producer at MTV made her say the line: “Hello, and welcome to MTV” over and over again until she stopped sounding embarrassed. It worked – eventually. View oEmbed on the source website Now, at the age of 39, Willis is rapidly becoming one of the most recognisable faces on primetime: she is the regular host of Big Brother on Channel 5 and has…

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Jeremy Paxman on why he's trading news for comedy in this year's election
type: item
date: 2015-05-05T15:40:00.000Z
creator: Elizabeth Day
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The veteran journalist will be co-presenting Channel 4's alternative election coverage alongisde David Mitchell, Richard Osman and other entertainment figures
encoded: Jeremy Paxman doesn’t like to watch himself on screen. In fact, he tends to avoid it altogether. “I find looking at myself on television horrible,” he says, a touch balefully. The BBC’s former inquisitor-in-chief, who left Newsnight after 25 years last June, is speaking in the back of a taxi on his way to the airport. This week, the 64-year-old will be fronting Channel 4’s election-night coverage and he is grabbing a short break trout fishing in Scotland before the hectic run-up to polling day. What’s the secret to landing a fish, then – patience? He bats away the question like a bored lion swishing at a fly with its tail. “People always say that, but actually, it doesn’t require a tremendous amount of patience at all,” he sighs, and for a moment I feel like a University Challenge contestant who has answered “Victoria Beckham” to a question about particle physics. “It requires concentration and immersion.” A pause. “Sometimes literally,” he adds. On Thursday night, 7 May, Paxman will be joined by comedian David Mitchell and guests including Pointless presenter Richard Osman for an acerbic, occasionally light-hearted look at the results as they come in. View oEmbed on the source website “The aim is to tell the whole story and to tell it in an entertaining way,” Paxman explains. “I’m not preparing any [comic] sketches, but there are some monologues about voting, about Scotland, what’s wrong with politics. And one or two bits of telly on the night that will involve the three of us.” At first glance, it might seem rather surprising that Paxman, the man who has never used one sneer when three would do and whose interview manner strikes icy fear into the heart of the ill-prepared politician, would sign up for this. But then you remember that, last year, he took a one-man show to the Edinburgh Fringe where he made jokes about tandem cycling with Sigourney Weaver and setting up a high-street Dignitas franchise. (“You’ll take Auntie Doris there and drop her off and she will …