There is something nigglingly contradictory about Brydon. He seems torn between pushing himself and coasting. He is in Cardiff shooting the second series of the BBC sitcom Gavin and Stacey, in which he plays Uncle Bryn, the kind of excitable character he can do in his sleep. The straight work is certainly more of achallenge, and respect is due to him for that, but he seems ambivalent about whether he really wants to pursue a stage career, “maybe a short run of something edgy at the Donmar”. He is recently remarried and living happily in southwest London, and work no longer seems his highest priority. “If I won the lottery I’d stop tomorrow and potter around at home.” But he knows that at some point his soul will need nourishing.
“That’s right, because when I did voiceovers and presenting in the Nineties, after a while I really wanted to do something substantial. That’s how Marion and Geoff came about. But I don’t have the hunger I had then. My life now is my wife and my three kids.” Midlife crisis? “No, more like midlife contentment. Someone like Ricky Gervais has drive – appalling dress sense, he dresses like a market trader – but he can focus better than me. If I’d done The Office I’d have gone on a world cruise, not written Extras.”
Brydon seems well-adjusted in a profession not known for balanced egos. “I’d love to be the most celebrated actor of his generation, a new Brando, but I know that’s not going to happen. My head isn’t that swollen. So much of the acting process is preposterous, all that waiting around and being brought juice in your trailer, it’s like the equivalent of a kid being brought lemonade sitting outside a pub. You feel like such a doofus.”
There certainly won’t be much opportunity to sit around while he is being a 24-hour drama person. “I’m looking forward to the discipline of being tested, but also I am trying to take a different approach to work. Usually in comedy my first thought is the best one. Now I want to enjoy the craft of acting a little bit more.”
It is not the first time Brydon will have appeared on stage without trying to get laughs, but it is the first time for a long time. At Porthcawl Comprehensive he was the class show-off: “I was Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Billy Bigelow in Carousel. I knew that was what I wanted to do professionally.”
Things went pear-shaped when he tried to get into drama college. “I auditioned for RADA but didn’t get in. I was terribly intimidated by these men from London who had Byronic Rufus Sewell hair and long coats and they were all exploring the human condition while I’d been in musicals and had impersonated my teachers.”Eventually, he landed a place at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. “I did a year, but then BBC Wales was looking for local talent for a radio show and I was in a double act where I played a club singer called Tony Casino – long before Steve Coogan did Tony Ferrino, I might add – who sang songs like Amarillo with a heavy Welsh accent. I started doing voices there and ended up being offered a morning show.
“At my last tutorial my teacher said I was drifting into light entertainment. Two years later I was hosting a Welsh tea-time panel show called Invasion and I’d enter by running down the aisle in a blue suede blouson with Eighties bouffant hair. So my teacher was right.”
As for the future, Keith Barret may yet return, though, personally, I’d rather see him work again with his friend Coogan. Their improvised banter in Michael Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story could have set them up as a postmodern Hope and Crosby, but Coogan is busy in America. “Steve and I haven’t seen each other for a while, but when we last met he said I’m like a brother to him. I guess he’s like a sister to me.”
