Danny Dyer: ‘My hero Harold Pinter turned down a knighthood – and I’d do the same’

The vibe, as it turns out, will be just fine. Later that night, Dyer’s pal, wrestler and Two Doors Down actor Graeme “Grado” Stevely, will post a selfie of the pair of them at the gig, and those images will end up on the websites of all the usual tabloids – more of the clickbait that seems to be getting him down on the morning of our encounter. “I find with journalism now, what even is it any more? It’s getting people to click a button and then you go on it and go, ‘Actually, that headline’s nothing like the article.’”

It’s only natural, listening to the grouches of this weary national treasure – and at a mere 47 years old already a grandfather of three – to show sympathy, perhaps even want to help in some way. But, of course, you can’t control the internet any more than he can.

So, what to do? Try and make our encounter sound tedious beyond belief? Well, the truth is you have to really go out of your way to make a Danny Dyer interview boring. Case in point: within seconds, he’s bringing his unfiltered energy to bear upon another aspect of online life, the algorithmically-tailored stream of content he finds it almost impossible to resist. Popping up in his feed the other day was a video of a rat catcher and his dog. “A geezer with a Jack Russell, and there was a rat stuck behind a television set. He comes in and his little dog can’t wait to go and get this f***ing rat.”

That this is the online content he’s being served up is most likely down to Dyer’s own search history and the fact that the house he shares with his wife Jo and two of their three children backs onto Epping Forest and all the little cockney mice that live there.

“I’ve become quite adept now at catching them. They can’t resist peanut butter. Sometimes they’ve got a little mate helping them, holding up the trap while they lick the peanut butter off, but if you put it in the sweet spot, they can’t help their little selves. And so I’ll kill them and chuck them in the forest so the foxes can have a little munch, instead of eating my grandkids’ nappies out of my dustbin.”

Rodents to the left of him, tabloid scrutiny to the right, and here he is stuck in the middle with the man from Radio Times. When I put it to Dyer that he sounds sick of his own voice, he concedes the point – “a little bit, mate, you know?” – and in doing so, finally relaxes.

You might say he’s having a moment. But the truth is that his “moment” hasn’t abated since 2022, when he left EastEnders, uncertain if there would be a place for him on our screens as anyone other than Queen Vic landlord Mick Carter. But the past 18 months have seen him harvest acclaim (and much female adoration) for his turn as Freddie Jones in Rivals on Disney+, for his Channel 4 documentary How to Be a Man and a lead role in Nick Love’s latest flick, Marching Powder. Then there’s also the matter of the BAFTA he won back in May for best male performance in a comedy in Mr Bigstuff.

Right now, it’s the latter that’s foremost in his thoughts. This week sees the return of Ryan Sampson’s chalk-and-cheese sitcom about the chaos that ensues when carpet salesman Glen Campbell – played by Sampson – has to deal with the sudden arrival of his estranged brother Lee into his life. As anyone who remembers Dyer’s 2018 “trotters up” Brexit tirade against David Cameron will attest, it boggles the mind to think that Mr Bigstuff is Dyer’s first major comedy role.

Perhaps surprisingly, he’s not a fan of “the canned laughter type of comedy of my youth – for me Only Fools and Horses doesn’t really work now”. But give him Bill Hicks or Ricky Gervais, stand-up comedy that “doesn’t give a f***”, and he’s happy. He still doesn’t think that Gervais, or anyone else, for that matter, has yet to match The Office – “this character that’s so obsessed with himself that he doesn’t realise what a dickhead he is.”

However, by the end of the second series of Mr Bigstuff, there’s every chance that we might be speaking about Dyer in comparably hallowed terms. The first episode sets out its stall with what might be one of the all-time great establishing scenes – Dyer as self-styled recycling vigilante issuing instructions at the neighbours via a karaoke machine between bursts of Barry Manilow’s Copacabana.

Sampson wrote the scene imagining what it might be like if Clint Eastwood had fallen on hard times on an Essex housing estate, a high watermark of silliness maintained by a succession of twists and turns, which include Glen’s fiancé Kirsty (Harriet Webb) trying to address his erectile dysfunction with a little Supernanny cosplay, and, perhaps best of all, a cameo from a sexually rapacious Rula Lenska that concludes with Lee coughing up a single red pubic hair. “Obviously we didn’t ask Rula for that,” explains Sampson. “That came from our make-up artist, Sam, who kindly snipped off a lock of her hair when the moment required it.”

If the only thing that a comedy does is make you laugh, then job done. But for anyone who knows a little about Dyer’s life, it’s impossible to miss passing similarities to his own story. The fact that Glen and Lee’s father isn’t dead but living a secret life has echoes of Dyer’s own childhood when, aged nine, he discovered that his dad had a whole other family in Paddington.

There are other points of intersection, too. If you watched How to Be a Man, you’ll know that, as a boy, Dyer struggled to gel with his more “feminine” brother, Tony. In the documentary we see a contrite Dyer tell him: “Never in a million years would I have had the bollocks to pick up a doll… It’s just not what boys do, you know? So I look back and think, ‘F***ing good for you, bruv.’” And perhaps the most touching moment in series two of Mr Bigstuff comes when Lee explains to Glen that even within the same family, people can have very different experiences of the same parent. And that’s OK: “Me and Dad, we’re the same. But he loves you. Do you know why I know that? Because I f***ing love you. You dickhead.”

While Dyer takes the compliment, he adjusts the anglepoise onto the power in Sampson’s writing rather than anything that went on his own family. That’s hardly surprising given that it was Dyer who inspired Sampson to create Mr Bigstuff. The two met back in 2013 while filming in Bulgaria for ITV2’s Roman Empire comedy Plebs. Dyer’s arrival in Sofia caused something of a commotion thanks to his starring role as football hooligan Tommy Johnson in 2004’s The Football Factory, which was a huge hit in eastern Europe.

Upon arrival, Dyer recalls the shock that greeted cast and crew as leaflets directed at Sampson, who is gay, were distributed, advising men not to hold hands in public. Dyer used his profile to ensure that no one in their party came to any trouble. “I got us into some nightclubs where the bouncers looked after us,” he recalls. The affection in which Sampson and Dyer continue to hold each other was evident during Dyer’s Bafta acceptance speech, which he used to call a tearful Sampson “one of the best actors this country’s ever produced”, adding “he’s never done the same thing twice, which is not something that I can say”.

Of course, if the subtext of that joke were true, it’s almost certain that Dyer wouldn’t be enjoying his current exalted status. John Simm, Dyer’s friend and co-star in the pair’s breakthrough movie Human Traffic, says you underestimate Dyer’s versatility at your peril. “This idea that ‘range’ is what makes you a great actor is a bit simplistic,” he tells me, “Obviously you see a lot of Danny in any role he plays, but put Danny anywhere – theatre, comedy, soap, drama – and time and time again, he delivers.”

Famously, Dyer was Harold Pinter’s muse during the latter years of his life, starring in three of his plays. Dyer says he had no idea who Pinter was before the Nobel-winning playwright invited him, aged 22, to audition for his play Celebration. At the end of its run, the cast presented Pinter with a signed poster. The message Dyer scrawled on it – to Pinter’s delight – was, “Harold, you’re the f***ing bollocks”.

The continuing reverence in which Dyer holds Pinter is evident in his response when I ask him whether he has ever been approached about appearing on the New Year’s Honours list. “Have I f***! Harold was my hero and turned down a knighthood. He was anti-establishment as well, so I don’t think it’s for me.”

If he hasn’t always been able to choose jobs that look good on his CV, he puts that down to the need to provide for the family he has had since he was 18, when he became father to his daughter Dani – winner of Love Island in 2018 and now a TV presenter herself. He briefly earned the nickname “DVD Danny”, because his stock-in-trade had become straight-to-DVD documentaries about hard men that played up to the working-class “geezer” stereotype. Not high art, but in getting him on the property ladder, they served a purpose. “Can the class thing be used against you?” he ponders. “Of course it can.”

I tell Dyer that it was surprising to hear Louis Theroux describe him in a recent interview as “unapologetically working class”, and he tersely concurs. “You’re right. Why should I apologise or even think about it? It’s just who I am.”

Though he’s itching to return to theatre, Dyer maintains there are some things he can never imagine himself doing. Although his Rivals co-star Alex Hassell is trying to convince him to do Shakespeare, he says, “whatever I do next, it won’t be f***ing Shakespeare, I’ll tell you that now. Maybe when I’m pushing 60 I’ll have a go at it, but at the moment, not for me.”

In any case, he thinks that the pressure-cooker thriller he recently shot in Ireland “might turn out to be my Hamlet”. Rather like Robert Redford in All Is Lost, Dyer is the sole character in Three Quick Breaths, playing a football agent racing against the clock to land one last payday for his star player before his own life and his player’s reputation implodes. “Fifteen pages of dialogue a day. Crazy. We shot it in Dublin. I just sat in the hotel room with the script. Went crazy by the end. I believe they went to Gary Oldman first. They told me he wanted £2 million just to read it. But I was next in line, which I’m chuffed with. If you go Gary Oldman and I’m next, it’s because I’m obviously cheaper. I’m happy to be a cheaper version of Gary Oldman.”

Dyer hasn’t had time to think about his impending 48th birthday on 24 July. But it will almost certainly be spent in Bristol where filming is under way for season two of Rivals.

“I can’t reveal much,” he says, “but what I will say is that we’ve got no issues with the old second album syndrome. I’ve been blessed with a lovely character. He’s not the lead and he doesn’t need to be the lead, same as Katherine [Parkinson who plays his love interest, romance author Lizzie Vereker]. And yes, we do get a bit more Freddie and Lizzie this time around.”

The sun shines through the skylight, prompting Dyer to reach for his shades. The clouds have also dispersed on his mood. He knows that when he gets to Cardiff tonight, he’ll have a blast, but right now, the greatest luxury he can think of is a week or two at home without the need to learn any lines.

The last time that happened was back in 2020 when lockdown hit and he quickly needed something to occupy his “nutty brain”. Taking matters into his own hands, he bought a Lego Hogwarts Castle complete with classrooms, towers, Hagrid’s hut, five boats and Whomping Willow. Then he moved on to “a Lamborghini, which you assembled from, I don’t know, 35 bags...” And so now, his happy place is the loft where he dons circular LED magnifying spectacles designed for precision modelling or, as he calls it, “building shit”.

“I recently built a library with staircases and little books in it and little lamps on the wall, but I f***ing broke the roof as I put it on. I was fuming.” Undeterred, as soon as he wraps on Rivals, he’s ready to embark on his next project: “A little 1940s train carriage with leather seats, with a conveyor belt that makes it look like the train’s moving.” Adorable, right? And the train sounds nice, too.

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