HEADLINE: I LOVE BEING A GEEK AND I DON'T CARE WHO KNOWS IT; ANSWER THE QUESTIONS! SIMON PEGG
Simon Pegg, 33, first made his name as Tim, the twentysomething slacker in Channel 4's cult sitcom Spaced, which he co-wrote with Jessica Stevenson. Born in Gloucester and educated at Bristol University, the actor and comedian also starred in Big Train, 24 Hour Party People and Linda Green. Now he has a lead role in Final Demand, BBC1's Easter drama. He plays a geeky, python-loving gas-meter-reader who is duped into marrying a vampish accounts clerk.
How would you describe your character in Final Demand?
His needs are very simple: he's got his reptiles and he lives with his mum, but he's not a caricature geek with jam-jar lenses, an anorak and a squeaky voice. He's quite complex. He's just very naive, and when Natalie Tamzin Outhwaite comes on to him, he never smells a rat.
What was the most challenging aspect of the role?
I don't dislike reptiles, but the hardest thing was the python because of its sheer size. It was a seven-foot albino, like a great big muscle with a face. It was hard to concentrate on acting. Standing there with it around your neck, concentrating on moving it around your hands and keeping its head up - it was like spinning plates.
Is there any chance of a further run of Spaced?
I'd love to make another series, but we need to synchronise it so the six main cast members, the director and the producer can all take 18 months off at the same time to work on it. At the start, it was about being in your twenties and having an extension to your childhood that you didn't know what to do with. Now it would have to be about being in your thirties and still not knowing what to do with your life.
Why did the show strike such a chord?
Because it's very personal. We adapted aspects of our own lives for the benefit of the show. If you're very specific, you'll find so many other people feel the same way. They identify with it because the specific is universal. Most people can relate to the stuff about friends, slacking and being disillusioned about Star Wars. It's a fascinating idea that you could spend a sizeable chunk of your life having faith in something that turns out to be rubbish. After the end of the first series, I treated myself to a weekend in New York to see The Phantom Menace. So I ended up shelling out two grand to see a shite film.
Any plans for another sitcom?
Yes. With Nick Frost, who played my best mate in Spaced, I'm writing a new series for Channel 4 called La Triviata. It's a sitcom about a pub quiz team taken from our own experiences. It's based on a fantastic place called The Shepherds in Highgate, the greatest pub I've ever been to in my life. It's nothing special to look at, but it was run by the most wonderful family. Closing time became a blur. Coldplay played a gig there, and Gillian Anderson from The X Files came in for the pub quiz. There are just so many memories and stories.
Do you have plans to appear in any more feature films?
I've written Shaun of the Dead, a "zom-rom-com" zombie romantic comedy with Edgar Wright, who directed Spaced. We're both movie idiots and love zombie films. We went into pre-production at the beginning of February. I'm the lead part - that's why I wrote it! We've adopted George Romero's mythos from Night of the Living Dead. Zombies are brilliant metaphorical monsters, because they're us. There's nothing occulty about them. They're a great metaphor for one class of society feeding off another. With this film, we are trying to create a new sub-genre. I think you can take traditionally trashy formats and turn them into something else. We want to do for horror what Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did for kung fu movies.
What else does the future hold?
I'd like to write a book about geek culture. I love geeks - I'm a geek myself. Being a geek is such an unselfconscious expression of interest. You're saying, "I love this thing, and I don't care who knows it." Of course, the book would in reality merely be an excuse for me to spend a year going to every sci-fi convention under the sun...
Final Demand' is on BBC1 over the Easter weekend