Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
My life through a lens
Celebrities share the stories behind their favourite snaps. This week it’s actor, writer and presenter Angus Deayton, 63
1979
Performing was something that happened out of the blue during my third year at Oxford University, simply through meeting Richard Curtis. Someone had dropped out of the Oxford Revue and even though I’d had no acting experience, Richard [who later wrote Four Weddings And A Funeral and Love Actually but was then a mainstay of the group] asked me to step in. It changed my life because I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do after I’d finished at university, where I was studying French and German. This is me with Rowan Atkinson and Tim McInnerny parodying the publicity poster for the Woody Allen film from the previous year, Interiors. Our version was called Inferiors.
1993
Comic Relief is broadcast live, so presenting was always chaotic and terrifying. I’d come away thinking, how did we get away with that?! I’m still quite close to most of these people. Charming and hardworking Richard Wilson [far left], who I worked with on One Foot In The Grave, and Emma Freud [next to Richard] are godparents to my son, Isaac; I go on walking weekends with Harry Enfield [front, in red jumper]; and I attend Griff Rhys Jones’s [front, in dark jacket and white shirt] annual Christmas party.
1981
The Hee Bee Gee Bees was a pop parody band with Philip Pope [left] and Michael Fenton Stevens [right]. We sent up many musicians back then, including the Bee Gees. Maurice Gibb found it amusing, but Barry refused to talk to journalists who mentioned us because the name of our single was the rather unflattering Meaningless Songs (In Very High Voices). We were always bigger in Australia than the UK – we even reached No 2 in the charts there. We’ve since reformed and will be performing this summer.
2004
Two teams of celebrities competed to produce the best food in Hell’s Kitchen, but very often there would be no food whatsoever because it took so long to prepare. There would just be wine on the table and the diners would end up getting completely hammered. I presented the show from 2004-2007, and here I am with Gordon Ramsay, who was head chef on series one. He was very canny because he knew when to turn the histrionics on and off. He was able to act bonkers without actually being bonkers.
1969
This daring shirt was the first I owned that wasn’t a school shirt. I was 13 and had obviously gone mad with the freedom of choice. One teacher described me as subversive in my school report, though I wasn’t exactly a troublemaker. I just didn’t embrace the establishment. I was the only prefect who didn’t punish anyone in my year, but I would never portray myself as a rebel.
1986
I’m playing Rowan Atkinson’s comic foil here on Broadway – though the revue only ran for a week because the theatre critic for the New York Times, who was known as the butcher of Broadway, didn’t find it funny. He had the power to close a show. I still see Rowan a lot. Stephen Fry once said of him that God realised he had this huge pot of funny that he hadn’t used on anyone else in the past year, and dumped the whole lot on Rowan.
2006
It was a dream come true to be picked for the England Soccer Aid team. I’d had trials for Crystal Palace when I was 13, but playing alongside international superstars like David Seaman, Romario and Luis Figo was in a different league. There was a hilarious moment when Ben Shephard and I were discussing tactics and I said, ‘If Romario and Figo go wide, leave them to me.’ We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
1956
We all look incredibly well dressed here for the back garden in Surrey, so we must be on our way to my christening. My mum’s holding me, next to my dad, Mum’s sister Mary [left], and my older brothers, Bill [left] and Alan [right]. As the youngest of three, my brothers tell me I was the spoilt one, but I remember the things I wasn’t allowed to do that they were. The grass is always greener.