Here's an excerpt from an interview I did with Keith Chegwin in 2006 for the London Evening Standard. He was just about to appear in Extras with Ricky Gervais as a darker, smuttier version of himself. I went to his big house just outside London to interview him. He could not have been more friendly or more open.
Cheggers is probably the most excruciating cameo we've done," Ricky Gervais has said. "One scene holds the record for the most takes in either series of Extras - we just couldn't get through it without laughing."
When the episode, the first of the new series, aired last night, it was excruciating to watch, too. But that's the genius of Gervais, and the joy of Extras, his showbiz satire that depends on puncturing inflated egos and searching out the comedy in tragic losers. It also relies on a supply of celebrities willing to send themselves up in guest appearances - and former chirpy children's TV presenter Keith Chegwin did just that.
There was a time, in the Seventies and Eighties, when you couldn't turn on your TV without seeing Cheggers clowning for the camera. But his star faded and, he admits now, he became the TV personality everyone loved to hate.
"I've been knocked, I've been javelined, I've been pronged, poked in the eyes, kicked in the bollocks," says the 49-yearold Liverpudlian, who looks chunkier and more weather-beaten in the flesh. "I gave Ricky a hug when he made that comment, it's the first time in 30 years someone has said something nice about me."
Chegwin is clearly delighted with his Extras cameo, in which he portrays himself as racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic and, frankly, dim. When he asks Gervais's character, Andy Millman, about the BBC - "Still run by Jews and queers is it?" - all we can do is cringe with embarrassment and laugh in shock.
The question is, will Extras do for Cheggers what the first series did for Les Dennis, and revitalise his flagging career?
These days, Chegwin's TV work is confined to his early-morning slot on GMTV, on which he presents a regular item, Doorstep Challenge, giving away money to sleepy people who can answer inane questions. He has also launched Chegger's Bingo, a new internet venture (an earlier one failed).
Les Dennis parodied his tragic tabloid persona and revealed a knowing sense of his own absurdity. But does the effervescent recovering alcoholic Chegwin, who once got naked to present a Five quiz show, have that same self-knowledge?
Chegwin insists that he has no dark side ("I know it sounds cliched, but I enjoy life"). Even when he was a drinker he says he was "a happy alcoholic".
I'd been told that he wouldn't discuss his boozing, but there is no stopping him.
"I hold me hands up, it's all true what the papers said - I was found in a hedge and I did take my clothes off and moon on a snooker table. I've never said this before, but while at the time it was appalling, looking back it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I appreciate the small things in life."
His wife (Maria, with whom he has a four-year-old son, Ted) played a big part in his recovery. When he had to travel the country for Channel 4's The Big Breakfast, she rang ahead to get the drinks removed from hotel mini bars.
Chegwin has no easy explanation for his alcoholism, which landed him in at least three clinics. "Showbiz is great if you've got a drink problem because there's nothing unusual about having a glass of champagne at 10am. There were so many excuses: my childhood, my work, this, that. To be honest, I've just got an addictive personality.
"Even when I was 17 I'd go and buy a bottle of sherry from the off-licence.
When I went to a party I would never have had enough; I used to take a can of lager home with me..."
Watch Keith Chegwin in Extras here.
