Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
I felt pointless until I found I could sıng
After deciding he’d turned into a ‘professional idiot’ (never mind the BAFTA and all that) Alexander Armstrong made up his mind to do something really special. By Rebecca Hardy
Few of us would think of Alexander Armstrong as an idiot. With a high forehead that screams ‘I’ve a brain the size of the planet’ and having studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, the co- presenter of BBC1’s Pointless is one of the cleverest quiz show hosts on telly.
But a couple of years ago, ‘an idiot’ is exactly what Alexander, now 46, decided he was. ‘As I approached my mid- forties I noticed how much of an idiot I was compared to my contemporaries at university,’ he says. ‘The people I used to loaf about with are all doing fascinating, wonderful things.
‘I’ve a friend who’s a QC now, one who’s a financial journalist, friends who work for charities and do the most special things. When we all left Cambridge aged 22 or 23 we were all much of a muchness, then suddenly I realised, “Oh my God, everyone I know has at least one fantastic area of expertise. They’re all frightfully clever and I’m a professional idiot – one up from a clown.” I’m a comic. There is no area of expertise to which I can lay claim.’
Now Alexander has made a career, not to mention a small fortune that affords a country pile in the Cotswolds within spitting distance of the Chipping Norton set (more of which later) out of playing the professional idiot. He’s found huge success as half of the double act with the equally brilliant – and Cambridge-educated – Richard Osman on Pointless, and he won a BAFTA for Best Comedy Series with Ben Miller for The Armstrong And Miller Show in 2010.
Is he joking then with this I’m-such-an-idiot stuff? After all, most clowns would give up both their funny bones for a fraction of his success. As well as Pointless, Alexander has succeeded David Jason as the voice of the classic cartoon Danger Mouse, hosts the weekend lunchtime slot on Classic FM, often guest presents Have I Got News For You and has just released his second album Upon A Different Shore.
The singing, he says, is what stretches that brain of his – and it’s helped him save face with his friends. ‘I missed it like hel l ,’ says Alexander, who was a bass baritone at Cambridge. ‘My recurring nightmare after leaving university was missing choir practice. In my dream I turned up and everyone asked, “Where have you been?” But it was a betrayal, not a glorious homecoming. Being engaged in music again has put the nightmare to rest.’
He calls the album a ‘16-track modern symphony’, fusing as it does songs as diverse as Vaughan Williams’ The Vagabond and The Stranglers’ Golden Brown. On two of the tracks Alexander also plays his oboe for the first time in almost 30 years. He resurrected his singing career after belting out a song on Comic Relief four years ago. After touring with his own band in 2013 he released his first album A Year Of Songs in 2015, becoming the first comedian to top the UK classical charts. ‘ I’m back with my imaginary orchestra like I was when I was a boy,’ he says. ‘It’s my passion.’ Which makes playing the professional clown his day job? ‘That’s probably true,’ he says. ‘But that’s not to do down the day job.’
I should think not. After moving f rom BBC2 daytime to BBC1 in 2011, Pointless regularly attracts more than seven million viewers and, both this year and last year, won the Television And Radio Industries Club Awards for Best Daytime Programme. The show is such a runaway success it’s spawned five Pointless books, written by Alexander and Richard, the most recent of which is A Pointless History Of The World. ‘I got such stick when I took it up. There were relations, particularly from my parents’ generation, who had a kneejerk “Oh my God, it’s daytime TV” reaction.
‘The ones I adored would say, “We love Pointless. We watch it every day,” when it was on BBC2 in the afternoon. Others would say, “Why are you doing this?” There’s a fear that if you go into daytime you’ll become a daytime person, but I haven’t at all. Richard and I have remained resolutely ourselves.’
Indeed. Alexander doesn’t look like a daytime game show host. His ears are‘ pretty sizeable’ ( his observation) and his teeth aren’ t that blinding Hollywood white. He seems, though, more at ease and less excitable than of old. ‘I tended to make up for awkwardness with enthusiasm,’ he says. ‘I’m much more comfortable being who I am now, but performing still scares the c*** out of me. If I had to stand up and perform to this room of people now, and there are barely 20 of them [we’re in the bar of a swish central London hotel] my pulse would race and my mouth would dry up. You’ll notice I always tended to
‘Returning to music put my nightmares to rest’
‘I used to be selfish – it came from self-doubt’
do things as part of a double act. I found it enormously comforting. It removed the frenzy from my nerves.
‘I’ve got slightly better at it now. I used to loathe it. I hated the sound of my voice, the terrible affected casualness of it.’ He pauses. ‘I wonder which is the phase of one’s life when you think, “Right, this is me.” You look at the unfurling of a flower. Do you enjoy it when it’s this?’ He shapes his hands into a flower bud. ‘Or do you enjoy it when it’s lush? Which bit of your life is the best stage of your flowering?’
Alexander thinks about things like this. He always did, but learnt not to after being bullied at his Northumberland prep school for being ‘weird’. Growing up ‘in the middle of nowhere’ the youngest of three children born to a physician, Henry, and his wife Emma from ‘the poor side’ of a family of aristocrats, Alexander ‘hated’ his early days at the private Mowden Hall School. ‘I was teased for being weird and having big ears. I was hopeless at sport and I didn’t know a lot about the world. Other children are the cruellest things on this planet and when everyone’s trying to impress everyone else, there’s no easier way than pointing at another person and laughing.’
The bullying, he concedes, knocked his selfesteem but also forced him out of his introspection. Once he began to excel at music, earning the respect of his peers, he ‘ended up having extraordinarily happy memories at school’. Music scholarships at the posh Durham School and Cambridge followed. ‘I wanted to be a conductor,’ he says. ‘I found music so romantic. I’m a sentimentalist – at certain times of year I get powerful surges of melancholy.’
Deciding to pursue a career in acting rather than music after joining the Footlights at Cambridge was, he says, one of the most agonising decisions of his life. ‘You get to the end of your university career at the very point when your ability to play this instrument you’ve used all your life – in my case from the age of seven – has never been better,’ he says. ‘I was at the top of my game. You then think, “Right, I either go this way, which is music. Or I go that way, which is comedy.” One of the most difficult jobs is trying to be a professional singer. If you’re lucky enough to make a living you live out of suitcases in budget hotels.’
He chose comedy. Even now, Alexander doesn’t like to be away from home, particularly since, at the age of 33, he married events organiser Hannah, with whom he has four sons, Rex, Patrick, Edward and Henry, from the age of nine down. ‘I fall apart if I’m away from home too long,’ he says. ‘I’m very good at getting on with stuff but mentally I’m missing half my kit. Without Hannah my thoughts are sort of incomplete.
‘Doing the Arctic thing [ITV series Land Of The Midnight Sun last year] involved being away for two months. It was very difficult. When I came back part of my circuitry wasn’t there. When I saw my family again I just picked them up and breathed them in. I cried buckets. I was so thrilled to come back from a bleak landscape and see the colour of the grass. I drove home thinking, “Oh God, I love this place so much.”’
The family moved to the country from North Kensington before the birth of their fourth son. This, as much as anything else, he says, has led to his new-found easiness with life. He now counts 20 or so people as ‘close friends’. He’s not part of the Chipping Norton set, ‘although we do occasionally come across some members of that set, as one does.’ Hang on, Alexander, are you saying you’ve been chillaxing with our former PM David Cameron? ‘From time to time, but I haven’t seen him since he’s become the ex-prime minister and I don’t socially chill out with him.’ Ever sung for him? He shifts in his chair and changes the subject.
‘ Fami ly is what it’s about now,’ he says. ‘Before becoming a father I went through a phase of being horrifically self- centred and selfish in my 20s and early 30s. I have memories of being difficult, awkward and demanding. I think it all arose from self-doubt and insecurity. One of the balms of being moderately successful is that you no longer have to prove yourself.
‘When I used to meet people I hadn’t seen for six months they’d ask, “Are you resting?” The answer, of course, was yes, but in my head it was, “No, I’m working towards some ultimate goal which will make your shabby desk job seem oh so tawdry.” I was forever trying to exalt myself – largely in my eyes but in other people’s too.’
The success of The Armstrong And Miller Show changed that. He smiles. ‘ I’m grateful to all the different strands that have brought me here,’ he says without a smidgeon of smugness. ‘Back to my music. Funny, isn’t it? You know something?’ He leans forward in his chair. ‘I do things I love and I’m committed to the things I do but, at the end of the day, I’d give it all up to be at home with my family.’