Just Williams

‘Playing love scenes is tricky for us giraffes – kisses have to be staged on a sofa or at the foot of the stairs’

Simon on why it’s tricky being tall

I KEEP FORGETTING how tall I am (6ft 4in). I roam the planet imagining I’m of average height, something I stopped being in my mid-teens. In group photographs I’m shocked to realise that the lumbering great beanpole in the middle is me; in shop windows I see myself surrounded by tiny-wee passers-by – I live in Lilliput. Going down stairs, I always think there must be another step. I’ve never got used to being this tall.

Vertigo kicked in when I was about 14, and, just when I fancied it, dancing cheek to cheek stopped being an option, at least with girls in flat shoes. Beds are mostly too short, and shaving mirrors everywhere are set for Ronnie Corbett – I have to limbo dance to get at my Adam’s apple. I’m forever being told, ‘Mind your head’ – but when I do bang it on a low beam, it’s adorable that onlookers laugh as if it served me right. I’d like the world to know that inside this scowling old Tallasaurus is a short, cuddly man trying to get out.

At the top of the measuring stick we use for monitoring the children’s growth is an arrow pointing off upwards, and next to it is written: ‘Grampi, somewhere.’

The wonderful Eric Morecambe greeted me, ‘Hello, I bet you’re taller than you thought you were.’ It’s true, I am. I’ve grown used to being told that I’m taller than television viewers expect – jovially I answer that they’ve probably got a TV set with very short legs. (Oh reader, imagine the laughter.) Having played so many crusty old snobs in my time, I have to be extra friendly with people in the street, or ‘in the flesh’ as it’s known – as if one had a choice. If they take selfies, the top of my head will definitely be missing.

Listeners of The Archers tell me they imagine Justin Elliott, my Ambridge alter ego, is a short, tubby, follicly challenged man – something between Captain Mainwaring and Homer Simpson – so at least on the radio I’ve dodged the typecasting trap.

Playing love scenes is tricky for us giraffe types – kisses have to be staged on a sofa or at the foot of the stairs.

The annoying thing about children is their size – they start life being so little, there is at least three feet of clear water between their mouths and my ear, so hearing the details of their incomprehensibly busy lives can be tricky. Hence my brilliant idea: a hearing aid that attaches to the knee and transmits in the ear of us doting old codgers. Perhaps James Dyson, one of the cleverest of the UK’S clever clogs, could buy this brilliant idea from me, so I can retire and stretch out my excessive length on a beach in the Caribbean while shorter mortals attend to my needs.

Simon plays Justin Elliott in The Archers