Cold call: Alan Jackson calls Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg, 33, stars with Tamzin Outhwaite in the two-part thriller Final Demand, which broadcasts tomorrow and Monday on BBC1. He lives in north London with his girlfriend, Maureen.
Alan Jackson: Like many a modern Briton, you're partial to a pub quiz. Specialist subject?
Simon Pegg: I'm Mr Film Geek, with a bit of history and geography thrown in. I'm out of practice though, because my favourite local's changed hands and the quiz has changed with it. It used to be run by this gruff bloke John, and his wonderful matriarch of a wife, Bernie. She'd set the questions, which would range from easy-peasy to mad hard, depending on her mood. Sadly for me, they've now retired back to Ireland.
AJ: Name of your team?
SP: It changed from week to week. All part of the ritual. Quizzers with Attitude was one. Crouch End Tigers, Highgate Dragon was another. A friend, Nick Frost, and I are writing a sitcom for Channel 4 based on it all, La Triviata. So many stories and memories. Once, Coldplay did a gig in the corner, raising money for the Whittington Hospital's baby unit.
AJ: You're a friend of lead singer Chris Martin, I'm told. Does he know you're often to be found cruising the aisles of DIY superstores?
SP: What can I say? It's just the nesting instinct. After years of living in rented accommodation, you finally get a place of your own and realise that, yes, you can be the architect of your own environment. You buy drills, saws, paintbrushes and all manner of other stuff. You're surrounded by your own aesthetic, by which I mean a set of dodgy self-made shelves. Lovely.
AJ: Most exciting recent purchase?
SP: I've just become the proud owner of my first lawnmower. A genuine rite of passage. In some cultures, youths wander off into the desert, then return to their communities as men. Buying a Flymo or a Qualcast is the middle-class, English equivalent. A seminal event in my life.
AJ: What would your scornful teenage self have said to a man who planes wood and keeps his grass neatly mown?
SP: He'd have laughed, sneered and pitied. He'd have said, "Get a life, mate!" How he would have hated the person I've become. Yet I don't feel I've made any great compromise or ceded any of my youthful ideals. I do have a life. It's just that it now comes with a place of my own and a garden, and they both need taking care of.
AJ: Simon Pegg's retort to his callow younger self?
SP: Oh, just a smile and a pat on the head and then a slightly menacing, "You'll learn, you little shit!"
AJ: Even he would be impressed at your bravery in Final Demand. You act one scene with a 7ft albino python draped around your neck.
SP: I was lucky. He was such a friendly, docile creature. It wasn't any big deal.
AJ: There speaks a man who knows no fear.
SP: Are you kidding? If they'd said I'd be working with spiders, it would have been a total rethink. Spiders would have been a deal-breaker. "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to find another guy!"