In the 2024 play Player Kings at the Noël Coward Theatre and tour, Robin Soans played Justice Shallow, with the show being a new adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, which was written by Robert Icke. Prior to Player Kings, Robin multi-rolled as Duke Senior and Duke Frederick for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s As You Like It, and having a long-running theatre career, some of his recent roles have included Bert in the world premiere of Barney Norris’ play We Started to Sing at the Arcola Theatre and Professor Serebryakov in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at Hampstead Theatre. Also having an extensive screen career, Robin has played roles such as Pope Pius VII in Ridley Scott’s Oscar-nominated feature film Napoleon, which starred Joaquin Phoenix, Kindly/Elf Man in The Princess Switch trilogy for Netflix, Arthur Bigge in Victoria & Abdul with Judi Dench and the Equerry in The Queen. As well as acting, Robin is a playwright of plays and poetry, and he has upcoming projects for both acting and writing. Chatting with Robin, he told us about his time as Shallow in Player Kings, multi-rolling in As You Like It, filming for the Oscar-nominated feature film Napoleon and his career highlights so far including The Queen and Victoria & Abdul.

Last year, you were in the cast of Player Kings at the Noël Coward Theatre in the West End and on tour as Shallow, how was your time in the show?

Ian McKellen, who was playing Falstaff, described the cast of Player Kings as one of the best and most supportive companies he had ever encountered. I would echo those sentiments. When Robert Icke asked me at my interview how I liked to rehearse, I replied that while concentration and application are uppermost, it helps when there is a certain amount of humour and bonhomie in the room. It’s difficult enough, I said, getting any play on, and if someone thinks the whole process is about them to the detriment of everyone else, and is behaving like an arse, that’s just another hurdle to get over in the process. But there wasn’t anyone in our company like that, which not only led to a wonderful production encased in Hildegard Bechtler’s magnificent set, but a truly rewarding experience in which actors, stage management, dressers, and everyone at ATG behaved in a supportive and friendly manner… and that was from the first day of rehearsal through the West End run and on throughout the tour.

On a personal level, Justice Shallow was a part I had longed to play. It has been described as a great comic role, but I have played several such parts in Shakespeare, and the word ‘comic’ always puts me on my guard. These so-called comic roles are often much deeper and more complex than appears on the surface, and any idea of starting with an idea of comedy is misleading. Look at what’s on the page, and don’t lard the lines with a comic tinge which isn’t there. Play them for the veracity of the words, and what it will reveal is the depth of vulnerability under the surface.

My greatest reward throughout my 54 years of acting has been when someone comes up afterwards and says, “I thought I knew this part, but tonight I heard lines I’ve never heard before.” Adrian Noble, who used to run the Royal Shakespeare Company, gave a note to an actor. He said, “An actor is in many ways the conduit between what’s on the page and the audience, and if the actor scrabbles the lines too much,”… what I would call spitty/dribbling acting… “the audience never gets the meaning of the text.”

When I was a student actor, Hugh Cruttwell, the Principal of RADA, berated me for getting too many laughs. “Where was the silver thread of truth?” he asked and went on, “If you were any good as an actor you would see that this character could not only make me laugh, but could also make me cry.” One of the best notes I was ever given.

What was it like taking Player Kings around the country and seeing the audience response to the production, which was a new adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, written by Robert Icke?

The last four weeks of the production in Bristol, Birmingham, Norwich, and Newcastle were conducted without Ian, who notably fell off the stage on the last Monday of the run at the Noël Coward.

But the strength of the production and the immense attention to detail that Robert Icke had instilled in the company, plus a strong mutually-supportive spirit, kept the whole enterprise buoyant.

It was to the credit of the concept and direction, that most people, despite the 3 hour 20 minute running time, said the evening didn’t seem long at all and were engrossed rather than checking their watches.

How did you find the experience multi-rolling as Duke Senior, Duke Frederick and Hymen in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2023?

As You Like It at the RSC in 2023 was another joyous affair which will remain long in my memory. The concept of the evening was that a group of actors who had done the play 40 years before as young actors, reunite in a rehearsal room to see what remains of their youthful experience. This has been dubbed ‘The Bus-Pass’ production… with most of the actors now in their 70s.

There were many actors I had worked with before, and again, this was one of those precious experiences when there was a warmth and compassion that permeated the company and the sometimes-perceived elements of conceitedness and back-biting were entirely absent. It was noted many times from the audience that the palpable warmth that existed between the players transmitted itself to the audience, and that the respect we had for each other was clear for all to see. But then, most of us have been round the block a few times, and were much more committed to contributing to the production than sticking our heads above the parapet of self-interest.

And again, personally, this was an absorbing challenge… to play both Duke Frederick and Duke Senior – one dictatorial, spiritually wizened, malevolent and paranoid; the other benevolent, resigned to his life of exile, if anything a touch gullible but well-intentioned… and this without much of a change of costume, because we were all in rehearsal clothes, certainly to begin with.

Again, if I might be permitted a compliment, one critic said she had to check her programme to see if it was the same actor playing both roles. I think, however, that this is as much due to Shakespeare’s writing as any acting skills of mine. The language was so intrinsically opposed between the two characters that my physical and mental approach was largely led by the playwright… and helped by Omar Elerian’s imaginative and sympathetic direction.

The older I get, the more admiration I have for Shakespeare, who, as a political, psychological, humanistic, and emotional playwright, remains unrivalled. Some of those lines… when Orlando bursts into Duke Senior’s exiled camp in the Forest of Arden, and brandishes a sword demanding food, the Duke merely enquires, ‘What would you have? Your gentleness shall force more than your force move us to gentleness.’

How was it being part of the world premiere of Barney Norris’ play We Started to Sing in 2022 at the Arcola Theatre as Bert?

We Started to Sing at the Arcola wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Barney Norris, the playwright, is a friend of mine, and we have worked together three times now. But he is a writer who deals in the complexities of domestic life. His writing has all the intricacies of a string quartet, which, in an age of wanting a full orchestra at fortissimo, is slightly out of fashion. No tanks burst through the back wall, the set doesn’t spiral or collapse—what we are left with is the deft interplay between family, neighbours, or friends, and I don’t think there’s another writer at present who can weave such a delicate, funny, and moving plaid out of minutiae.

Two things made this a special experience for me. Firstly, my wife in the play was played by Barbara Flynn and we have been friends for years. Secondly, Bert comes from Northamptonshire, where I was born and brought up, and although my accent is RP, the music of the Northamptonshire accent was what I heard as a child and comes as second nature to me. When people said, “That’s the first time I’ve heard a proper Northampton accent. Where did you get that from?” I would reply that I was born ten miles from where the play was set.

Also, as a personal acting challenge, Bert had to physically and mentally disintegrate—from the one with the dry humour to a gibbering invalid sliding into death. That is my cup of tea.

In 2018, you played Professor Serebryakov in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the Hampstead Theatre, was there anything that drew you to the play and how was it performing in the show?

Professor Serebryakov… I first encountered this part at RADA… I don’t remember that much about it, except that the evening started with a tableau—the full company on stage in various poses silhouetted against the cyclorama at the back—and as the main lights came up, we all moved, and the play started.

The trouble was that one of the actors, by his own admission, used to fart loudly when he got nervous, so the curtain rose to the sound of loud farting, an actor muttering “Sorry, sorry, everyone,” and the rest of the cast slightly shaking.

About 30 years later, Terry Johnson wrote a new adaptation, of which we did a rehearsed reading in a Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge – Act 1, then the starter; Act 2, then the main course; Act 3, then the pudding; Act 4, then coffee and more drinks. Between each actor sat a potential producer or artistic director, but nothing at that stage materialised… nothing until ten years later, when Hampstead gave the production a slot, and Terry said to me, “You’re now the right age to play the part.”

The Professor is at once irritable, dictatorial, pompous—but then again vulnerable and old before his time. As an actor, you’ve got to see why the young and beautiful Yelena Andreevna would marry him… there’s something about intellect, self-awareness, and frailty that is as attractive as physical presence.

On screen, you’ve most recently been seen in the Oscar-nominated feature film Napoleon as Pope Pius VII, what was it like working on set of a Ridley Scott film?

Napoleon. Yes, my call was 5:30am on a cold March morning, and I was going over the lines in my head, and sleep eluded me. In Napoleon, the Coronation was filmed in Lincoln Cathedral, with a vast nave stretching from the chancel steps to the western doors. The pews contained two choirs, an orchestra, a battalion of Napoleonic soldiers, then up to the side seats Napoleon’s throng of friends and relations, dignitaries and nearer to the altar, 70 cardinals, choirboys, Napoleon’s aides and confidants, even the painter David, committing the scene to canvas, and then in front of the high altar, Il Papa… Pope Pius VII.

Four cameras, one on a wire leading from west to east in the cathedral, one up high, one mid-height, and a loose close up… Ridley Scott’s historic advisor said that at the start of the scene, the Pope would be reading a Latin prayer. Ridley Scott said to me, “Can you read Latin?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Without glasses?”

“Without glasses,” I assured him.

Then he said, “I don’t like to rehearse, I like to get it fresh, is that ok with you?”

“Fine,” I said, thinking ‘There’s about a thousand people in this building, four cameras, Joaquin Phoenix about to process up the aisle with a red velvet cape four yards long, carried by lackeys to arrive in front of me with Vanessa Kirby as Josephine. It’s taken months of preparation for this scene… choirs have been rehearsing for weeks, composers sweating over intricate scores, the armourers kitting out the soldiers, the sheer volume of costumes… my personal costume had seven layers, I’d had three fittings… there must have been seamsters and seamstresses burning the midnight oil for weeks… so please Robin, could you try not to **** it up.’

Just as the order came to turn over, an emissary from the director scuttled through the crowd and said to me, “Ridley says nice and loud.”

I’ve played the Olivier Theatre at the National many times, and, having one of those gunmetal tenor voices, usually manage to make myself heard so I wasn’t worried about audibility. In fact, after a series of takes I asked if the volume was alright, and the answer came back, “Fine, they can hear you in Peterborough.”

Anyway, it was a long and complex scene, and I had so much technical stuff to do up and down the steps and daubing foreheads and raising a cheer to the new Emperor, that it became all about concentration. Afterwards, the director said, “That was great, buddy. You’re sure you’re not the Pope in your free time?”

What did you enjoy most about playing Kindly/Elf Man in The Princess Switch trilogy for Netflix and how was it reprising your role for each film in the series?

Obviously I enjoyed the first episode the most because I got to play six different characters with various accents and different costumes. It was filmed in Romania in summer, so the snow in the street scenes was entirely synthetic. In the first old man scene, it was 38 degrees, I had on a greatcoat, a wooly jumper, a scarf and was ankle-deep in fluffy white stuff, with bumblebees and butterflies flying past, and wondered how I would explain this to a Martian.

Episodes two and three were filmed in Scotland and gave me an income during COVID. In the third film, the cast and crew worked for three months and due to strict testing, quarantining new arrivals, and wearing of masks, there wasn’t a single case of COVID. And Elf Man did his usual job of divine intervention to save the day.

Across Series 1 and 2 of Victoria, you played the recurring role of Sir James Clark, can you tell us about your character and what was it like being in the cast?

Victoria was a shambles. People would constantly be called and then not used for days, the schedule was muddled, it was all a bit mad. I’ll give you an example. I’m called for a scene at ten in the morning, lunch comes and nothing’s happened. At three they say it’s going to be the next scene, four o’clock comes and they say, “Quick, quick, we want to get this in before the end of the day. We’ll do a rehearsal.”

I start to say my lines and get quizzical looks all round. “What are you talking about?” “Sorry, these are my lines, aren’t they?” “Oh, you’ve still got the old script. This was rewritten last weekend. Didn’t we send you a copy?” “No,” but there was half-an-hour doing costume, hair, make-up and with a bit of help I managed to say most of the lines in the right order.

What was Arthur Bigge like to play in Victoria & Abdul?

I had worked with Stephen Frears on The Queen, which is why he asked me to play Arthur Bigge in Victoria & Abdul, but at the readthrough, he thought I sounded a bit like the Equerry I had played in The Queen, and gave me an old film to watch, and a particular actor whose voice and mannerisms he wanted me to emulate. The actor sounded like a mixture between Field Marshal Montgomery and a Colonel I knew as a child who would point to us and bark, “You, you and you.”

“You, you and you, don’t just stand there, go and mend a gate.”

“Please, sir, there isn’t a gate.”

“Well go and find a gate and then mend it.”

Such recollections come in useful. So I had a template to work on, and on the first morning’s shoot in the Painted Hall at Greenwich I launched my bombastic and clipped way of speaking and it met with approval.

This film was such a pleasure to work on. It felt more like a repertory company of theatre actors than a disparate collection of film actors, and there was the same sense of camaraderie that exists in theatre. A lot to do with Judi Dench, whose lack of pomposity, and generosity of nature infused the whole venture.

Over your extensive acting career so far, you have been involved with many other projects including the feature films Red Joan, Viceroy’s House and The Queen, TV series Dalgliesh, Doctors, Endeavour and Tales of Sherwood Forest, and theatre shows Visitors, Hamlet and Anything Goes, can you tell us about some of your stand-out highlights?

The Queen furnished me with a memorable line. I played the Equerry, and when he’s showing the Blairs upstairs to meet the Queen, he wheels round and says, “It’s Ma’am as in ham, not Ma’am as in farm.” Even now, people come up to me and say, “Don’t tell me.” “Don’t tell you what?” “It’s spam, no it’s jam, what is it? It’s not Ma’am as in spam, it’s calm for Ma’am. You said that, didn’t you?” “Yes.” “I thought it was you.”

Talking of which, I was walking along the towpath of the River Ouse near Ely in the fen country, and I came through a gate and met a group of walkers, and a man said, “I know you, don’t I?” “I don’t think so,” I replied. “No, no” he went on, “I know that face. You’re that electrical dealer in Great Yarmouth.”

In my 54 years, I have been fortunate to work most of the time. And I’ve done a lot of new plays as well as the classics, in a range of theatres… I think about 140 plays, and then a number of films ranging from Absolution with Richard Burton in 1978 to Napoleon and Joaquin Phoenix more recently. And a considerable amount of television and radio. My agent once got a casting breakdown from The Bill, and the brief for that episode’s guest actor was, ‘Weasley, sellotape round the glasses, unshaven, halitosis-ridden knicker-sniffing failed arsonist’ and everyone went Robin. And yes, I did get the part.

What stand out are the learning curves. As a young actor I was playing Raleigh in Journey’s End, the young man who arrives in the trenches fresh from public school. A man very like me… in fact, if I’d been born in 1899/1900 it would have been me. The average life-expectancy of a young subaltern in battle was 17 seconds. Anyway, I was acting being me, instead of being me, demonstrating outwardly what was going on in my head, which was already perfectly plain through the language. It was during that part that I had a damascene moment and learned to trust myself more and rely on the text to do the work and be more physically restrained.

There is a post-script to this story. In the French’s acting edition, it says in the scene where Raleigh is carried in with half his back missing, and is laid on a bed, and Stanhope goes to find a blanket and candle, it says, ‘His hand reaches to heaven, and then with a jerk flops down as he dies’ or words to that effect. ‘No’ I thought, ‘I’m going to lie completely still, nothing’, and then in my head I thought, ‘I’m going to die……… now.’ And as I said ‘Now’ in my head, 800 people went, “Aahh.”

Next one. I spent a year with Mike Bradwell at Hull Truck improvising and then playing Bed of Roses. It was a huge success, garnering prizes and drawing the attention of the illuminati. In London it played at the Bush Theatre to huge acclaim, and in one scene, a four-hander between myself, Kathy Iddon, Heather Tobias, and David Threlfall, the laughs were getting bigger and heartier. Mike Bradwell called us in one morning and gave us a broadside… he said to David and myself, “Who the **** do you think you are? Morecambe and ****ing Wise? Remember the 12 weeks of rehearsal and the people you based your characters on, and be faithful to that.” Yes, wise words, it is easy to get distracted by success.

I have been in several disastrous productions, but in many ways they have been more informative than the successes. You learn to go back to the basic principles of concentration, of listening and responding to your fellow actors, and being faithful to the text.

Third one. I was playing Sir Anthony Absolute in The Rivals at Nottingham Playhouse directed by James Macdonald and at the end of Friday rehearsal I asked him if he had any thoughts I could take away for the weekend. He said, “Georgian Theatre works best when it’s clean. Don’t fudge the beginning and ends of lines. The thought begins cleanly, and ends cleanly, like a guillotine.” Brilliant observation and actually applies to virtually every text from Shakespeare through to modern drama. It prevents unwritten ums and ers, or lip click and sigh acting, which belongs to ‘acting’ rather than being, and again it allows the audience to hear the words.

So to preempt the question what is my advice to a young actor, it would be to take heed of these matters, and to always remember that the best work arises from true collaboration, where you neither undersell nor oversell your character for the good of the whole. And also ask yourself as you launch into the profession, what do I want to be doing when I’m 60/70? Safely nestled in a long-running TV soap? Living in Hollywood (what’s left of it) or on the coast with a balcony overlooking the ocean, having forged a film career? Would you rather be good or famous… not always necessarily the same thing? Would you like to be in a cutting-edge new political play in a fringe theatre? None of these options are mutually exclusive, but they are good questions to ask.

Oh yes, and to recognise a good script when it comes along. More than once an agent has said to me, “Oh this came for you” and hands me a battered brown envelope. “It’s for not much money, and it’s in a cellar in Dalston. I’m sure you won’t want to do it.” I get home and I’ve got to page 15, and I phone my agent and say “Could you tell them yes… I’d really like to do it.” And it turns out to be by someone who later becomes a leading playwright. All acting roles are ephemeral, but some are more fleeting than others, and being a seminal play will survive longer than a few scenes in a soap.

Where does your love of acting come from and how did you originally get into the industry?

What made me become an actor? I had a lonely and repressed childhood, internally more than externally. I never felt I quite fitted anywhere. My father had a battered old Grundig tape-recorder in the attic, which, when I was seven, I would bring down to my bedroom, and make up radio plays, playing all the parts in a squeaky posh voice. Yes, social awkwardness was certainly a big factor in pushing me towards a profession which embraces misfits.

Then at university, I ran the drama society, and would put on plays which I would direct, and play the main part in, and design and build and paint the set for, and put up the lights, and have the tickets printed, and sell the tickets. This gave me an early respect for all the other parts of the theatre which are less glamorous than the actors but which are indispensable, and without which the actors would be up the creek without a paddle.

Oh, and my mother, when I announced my intentions of becoming an actor, said, “Well, if you want to end up in the gutter, that is the quickest way to get there.”

About three years after leaving RADA, I was in Bristol playing Feste in Twelfth Night… it was three in the morning, I’d been to a party and got rolling drunk, and flopped into the gutter. I was sitting there with my back against the brickwork, and on the other side of the road there was a streetlamp, and in the tree behind, in the lamplight, there was a robin singing full throttle, and I said to myself, ‘Ah yes, mother, you were right. Here I am in the gutter, but you know what? I wouldn’t be anywhere else if you paid me.’

What are some of your favourite films, TV and theatre shows to watch?

My all-time favourite films? Virtually anything directed by Alfred Hitchcock, especially in black and white. He leaves so much to the imagination and builds and releases tension in an extraordinarily creative way.

And then Death in Venice as a masterpiece of filmmaking by Luchino Visconti, every detail, every nuance, every shot exquisitely framed, and a wonderful performance from Dirk Bogarde.

My favourite television programme is The Repair Shop… taking something broken and in disrepair, and through dexterity and skill and patience and knowledge restoring it to its former glory.

Also, most sports… racing, football, snooker, tennis, golf… being in the moment.

I have an irrational dislike of period drama—young women in regency skirts and silky bonnets running towards a lake and laughing.

How do you like to spend your free time?

I don’t really have much free time, more by choice than accident. For 40 years I have been turning a four-and-a-half acre thicket overrun with brambles, blackthorn and nettles on the edge of the Chilterns, into one of England’s most secret and quirky woodland gardens, trying to marry extreme order in the middle to total wildness on the periphery. People who visit ask where the team of gardeners is, but there isn’t one. I do nearly all the work myself and I enjoy it. The mowing, pruning, hedge cutting, log splitting, minor tree surgery, spreading of wildflowers, the making of beetle banks, the leaf sweeping and compiling compost heaps, the planting of ferns, the care for the environment, the lack of chemicals, using solar panels on the roof of the wooden cabin to provide light and run the battery-powered tools, building a tree house for the grandchildren, all of this gives me peace and calm, and keeps me fit, and relatively sane.

It’s surprising how many hours there are in the day if you don’t watch daytime television or get pissed at lunchtime. I still live in London but I can be in the garden in 40 minutes and as soon as I get there my metaphorical shoulders drop six inches. What I have learned in 40 years of toil is that what you see on the surface is quite different from what is going on underneath. If I cut a hornbeam bough in January, when the tree is leafless and the buds are not yet fully formed, the sap pours out. If I cut a hornbeam bough in July, when the tree is fully leafed in all its summer splendour, not a drop of sap comes out. This is because on December 21st, the winter solstice, somewhere deep in nature, a great lever is turned and everything is on the up even though the results will not be evident for two or three months. Conversely, on June 21st, another lever tilts nature back towards the starkness of winter, and internal energies are draining away. But yet again, leaf-fall may not be for three or four months.

This idea that what you see on the surface is out of kilter with what’s going on underneath appeals to me, and I think it can be applied to people as well. I also paint rather bad landscapes in oil, I play the piano, I enjoy cooking and I go to the gym three times a week. I’ve made at least 20 short films, mostly with young directors and writers. There’s little or no money involved, but that means you can embrace the project for what it’s worth, and you don’t have to think about all the nonsense of hierarchy or kudos… you’re doing it because it’s heartfelt, interesting, and passionate, and there’s no one to interfere, or dictate how it should be done. Another case of gentle collaboration.

And I love working with young people… it keeps my own thinking young and fresh… and is a timely reminder that I don’t know everything.

You also work as a playwright, can you tell us about this?

And then there’s my writing… both plays and poetry. I was in a play at the Royal Court in 1996 called Waiting Room Germany, a rare verbatim play at the time… verbatim meaning you construct a play using the words of people you interview on a particular subject… in this instance, the German author Klaus Pohl had collected a series of interviews from people in a re-unified Germany five years after the Berlin Wall had been disestablished. This was five actors, myself included, sitting on chairs at the front of the Royal Court stage and talking to the audience as a number of different characters and their experiences. Never in my time as an actor had I received such rapt attention… and when I said this to Stephen Daldry, he said, “Well, why don’t you go away and try writing one yourself?”

Which I did… a prototype which taught me a lot about what worked and what didn’t. I sent a copy to Max Stafford-Clark, who had been running the Court and then ran the theatre company Out of Joint. He used to do some of this work in the 70s but the practice had largely died out except for Nick Kent’s tribunal plays at what was The Tricycle now The Kiln. Max was impressed, so when he decided to revive Rita, Sue & Bob Too! by Andrea Dunbar in 2000, he commissioned me to write a companion piece about what had happened on the Buttershaw Estate in Bradford in the 18 years since Andrea wrote her play, based on interviews in and around the area.

It was a life-changing experience, and I learned to listen more intently than ever before, and using nothing more than a notepad and rapid writing pen which my interviewees found unthreatening, put together the material for A State Affair, which ran for two years and had two stays in London at the Soho Theatre, and was performed in the River Room at the House of Lords. In the absurdity of modern fashion, I became an overnight authority on verbatim, so that when two young directors wanted to find out what was going on in Israel and Palestine just after the second Intifada, and were told they needed an experienced verbatim writer, I was asked to do it.

A few months later I found myself being held at gunpoint near the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, and narrowly missed being blown to pieces in a beach bar in Haifa. This was The Arab-Israeli Cookbook which ran in London on consecutive years. In the second of these years, I wrote Talking to Terrorists which ironically was performed at the Royal Court at the same time as the London bombings, and has since been performed all over the world, including, amazingly enough, Tehran, where the text was heavily edited, and I was told if I demanded my royalties I would probably get shot.

Then followed Life After Scandal at Hampstead, Mixed Up North, and Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage, a play about Bridgend in Wales and the pioneering Gareth Thomas. I also wrote Perseverance Drive for the Bush Theatre, the first play at that theatre with an all-black cast… talking of which, a young Jamaican teacher who had been falsely accused of assault and got a dirty CRB form asked me for help and I spent two years and £6,000 of my own money fighting his case, including hiring a private detective, and finally cleared his name. This story ended up as a play on Radio 4, so I got some of the money back.

In all my writing I have tried to give a voice to people whose voice isn’t usually heard in the public domain, but who probably have a greater idea of what is going on on the ground than the pontificators in government. Also, I have become increasingly sceptical about the term ‘ordinary people’, which is bandied about by politicians and political commentators alike. I have conducted thousands of interviews over the last 20 years, and I haven’t met an ordinary person yet, nor ‘a man in the street’ nor ‘a man on the Clapham Omnibus’. And if you asked the people who use these terms, if they were ‘ordinary’ they would say, “certainly not.”

Do you have any projects coming up that you can talk about, and what are you hoping 2025 brings for you?

I have plans already in place for 2025, both writing and acting, but I’m superstitious about counting my chickens before they’ve hatched, so I’d rather not say.

I would, however, like to start a discussion about the extremes of political correctness which are strangulating our profession. I know this has resulted from years in which certain minorities have been the subject of abuse, bullying and neglect, but to replace that with an equally oppressive regime seems to me sad.

We should all of us respect each other, whatever our sexual inclinations, our gender, or the colour of our skin. We should be broadening the parameters of tolerance, compassion and understanding, not putting barriers down which restrict the way forward.