The mainstay of British comedy on returning to BBC sitcom The Power of Parker and how Inside No 9 could have been massive – on Netflix
Sausage roll in hand and sipping a white Americano in the spring sunshine, he slips seamlessly under the radar. The lunchtime crowd – a mix of tourists, office workers and lawyers from nearby Lincoln’s Inn – blind to the multi-Bafta-winner in their midst. “I do tire of the big, heavy make-ups and stuff,” he admits, low-key for our conversation in a green shirt and puffer jacket. And who can blame him, after more than 25 years contorting his features with prosthetics in the name of entertainment?…
For now, Inside No 9 is a closed book, save for a regional tour of the stage show that kicks off this autumn. Taking the project to the theatre has brought him another element of closure. “We always wanted Sir Ian McKellen [on the series], because we’d had Sir Derek Jacobi, but the timing never worked out. But with the stage show, we had a different guest every evening, and on the penultimate night, Sir Ian came on. He added six minutes to the running time because he was so funny. I don’t know if it was the first occasion he’d been back on stage after he’d had his accident [falling off the stage at the Noël Coward Theatre, in June 2024], but he really connects with an audience. We were in awe. So it was a lovely full-circle that he was finally part of the Inside No 9 story.”…