Princesses and paddling pools in peaceful coup protests
THE ACTOR AND WRITER, 57, ON SURPRISE REUNIONS AND WHY SIR ROGER MOORE LOVED HIS CRIME SERIES UNFORGOTTEN
If Boris expects me to happily cough up £1,750 to stay at the Croydon Travelodge, I might get a bit grumpy but if he takes £1,750 off me and puts me up in one of the half-decent rooms at the Berkeley in Knightsbridge, I think he can expect the next electoral ‘Red Wall’ to somewhat dwarf the last one.
Paul King, Sidcup
The way things are in this world, every person returning or visiting the UK should be made to isolate immediately, with no exceptions, in hotels. No dilly-dallying, now, Johnson…
B Johnson, via email
A potential prison sentence of ten years is completely over the top and makes the government look juvenile.
Australia and New Zealand’s measures are much more sensible. Also, either close the door or open it – don’t leave it half open.
Peter Kelly, Hollingbourne
At last the government is introducing a prison sentence for falsifying travel details. This prison sentence should be extended to include falsifying that you have a Covid vaccination certificate.
A prison sentence should also be incurred for repeat offenders of those breaking Covid rules. I, and I think the vast majority of those sticking to the rules, are fed up to the back teeth of the so-called minority sticking two fingers up to the rules.
It isn’t about restrictions to civil liberties, it is about saving lives and – probably not understood by the offenders – all of us getting back quicker to a better life for us and them.
John T Pharro, Canvey Island
I am not surprised prison terms are going to be applicable for flying rulebreakers who do not give honest details when they land. Shouldn’t, though, tougher measures be introduced for the unmasked people still getting on buses and trains?
Only the other day someone got on the No.13 bus to Haverhill without one so I dodged that one and got a later one. I saw that the person who boarded the bus I wanted even had a good cough before he sat down.
A bus is a bit shorter than a plane and roughly the same width, and so viruses have nowhere to go. Bus drivers say they cannot force anyone to wear a mask and surely this is crazy.
The government could have brought in tougher measures for unmasked sinners but, no, they are slow on the uptake again.
I do wonder who is running the country, Boris Johnson or Foghorn Leghorn? And I voted for the former.
Harry John, Linton
Having just re-read (again!) Bill Bryson’s excellent book, The Body: A Guide For Occupants, I would urge everybody reading this letter to obtain a copy and read the section he devotes to viruses.
It will put the fear of Christ up you. Peter, Liverpool
When this pandemic is over, there needs to be a roll-out of IQ tests so we find out just how many Covidiots there are in this country.
A sizeable minority of the population haven’t even bothered to exercise the basic civic duty of keeping themselves and others safe.
Alan, North-West London
WOMEN marched in wedding dresses and inflatable pools lined the streets as protesters aimed to show their peaceful intent in Myanmar.
It was the fifth day activists have defied bans on rallies against last week’s military coup.
But yesterday’s protests were deliberately ‘light’ after Tuesday’s violence, in which riot police fired rubber bullets and used tear gas and water cannon.
A 19-year-old, Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing, was fighting for her life after being shot in the head during the fracas. Yesterday,
protesters sat in colourful, beach-themed inflatables outside the Japanese embassy in Yangon. Their placards denounced the detention of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the overthrow of her government by Gen Min Aung Hlaing.
The rally called on Japan, a big investor in Myanmar, to support the deposed government.
Meanwhile, ‘princess’ protesters showed young women’s part in the nationwide fight, which also includes civil disobedience affecting schools and hospitals.
TV crime dramas, whether true or fictional, seem never to have been more popular. Are we all just morbid?
I was watching one on Netflix recently. I think it was Night Stalker. You are watching it, going, ‘This is horrific, this is a serial killer, this actually happened.’ But there is a bit of you that is going, ‘How did they catch him?’ I want to know that there is a sense of justice in the end that makes my life hopeful, the fact that there is some order.
Your cold-case drama Unforgotten is back soon. Did you wonder how you were going to top the third series?
By series four you know that the scripts are going to be good, you know the guest actors are going to be brilliant. I’ve read all of the scripts for all four series as one would read a novel. There are four mini dramas within a whodunit. Each mini drama could be a series of its own.
Series four explores society’s relationship with the police. Why do you think your character DI Sunny Khan became a copper?
Sunny’s life probably had disorder in it. It’s about finding structure and order and wanting to contribute. I’ve met people who joined the police force for that reason. They wanted to serve their communities. I don’t think Sunny joined because he watched The Sweeney. He probably joined because he watched Dixon Of Dock Green with his dad when he was a kid in the 1960s.
He doesn’t do a lot of throwing people up against cars, going, ‘You’re nicked’, does he?
Yeah, well, not so far! I don’t want to give any spoilers but he might just start driving a car very fast and screaming, ‘Guv!’
The production had to break for six months because of Covid but it’s hard to spot which scenes were filmed before or after the new regulations…
In the interview scenes, most of which we did in that last month, the table across which we talk to the suspects was suddenly twice the size. It was like somebody had suddenly put a pool table in the room but with cameras you can lessen that distance.
I said The Saint was why I wanted to act. He said, ‘You thought if he can get a job, anyone can’
Your co-star Nicola Walker says she had to relearn her lines because it had been so long. Did you have any such problems?
It was strange coming back after that hiatus simply because you were picking up on storylines and themes you hadn’t thought about for months.
Phaldut Sharma has a guest role. Is this the first time you’ve worked with him since the show that became Goodness Gracious Me?
Yes. Phaldut was in the live show we did in 1995 called Peter Sellers Is Dead that became Goodness Gracious Me. About seven months after that we got a pilot for Radio 4 but Phaldut decided to do other things. About 12 years ago I did a documentary series in India. I was in Rishikesh, where The Beatles wrote The White Album. We’re up in the Himalayas and I bumped into Phaldut, who was there with his family. We both stared and pointed and went, ‘What the hell?’ What are the chances that I would randomly bump into him on the other side of the world?
The Saint was your favourite TV show as a kid. Is it true that you became good friends with your idol Sir Roger Moore?
I still pinch myself. Early on in the pandemic I was talking to Meera [Syal, his actress wife] and we were talking about where everything was heading with all the theatres closed and incredibly limited avenues of work for us. I said to her, ‘I was friends with Roger Moore.’ She said, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I said, ‘It’s everything.’ I cannot have become friends with Roger Moore and now at any point consider myself unfortunate. My mother used to refer to him as Hamara Roger Moore, ‘Our Roger Moore’ in Hindi.
Did you work together?
No, I was at an event hosted by the Prince of Wales and Stephen Fry, who had been on The Kumars At No 42, introduced us. I told him Live And Let Die was the first Bond film I went to see and I enjoyed it so much I saw it twice on the same day because it was continuous programming. He said, ‘You owe me £4.50.’ When I told him that The Saint was probably the reason I wanted to act, Roger said, ‘Of course. You thought if he can get a job, anyone can.’ Our friendship grew to the point that when he was here, we would meet and have tea and go to his shows.
When was the last time you spoke?
The last contact I had with him was an email a few months before he died. He said, ‘I watched your show, Unforgotten. Marvellously directed, marvellously acted, marvellously written and at the centre of it all there is my friend being utterly believable as a detective.’
Unforgotten returns to ITV on February 22