Stephen Mangan, actor
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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening. MUSIC PLAYS

My castaway this week is the actor Stephen Mangan. He's best known for his comedies, but is as versatile as he is popular. As well as shows like Episodes and Green Wing, he's also taken on serious roles, like the hit BBC drama The Split, and his long career on stage includes a Tony-nominated run on Broadway. He's also the host of game shows and arts programmes, such as The Fortune Hotel and Portrait Artist of the Year. He's also the host of a show called The Fortune Hotel,

He runs his own production company and is the author of a series of successful children's books, including the memorably titled The Fart That Changed the World. Born in London to Irish parents, he won a scholarship to a leading boarding school. He always loved drama, but says that with his background, declaring he wanted to become an actor was up there with informing everyone that you planned to become an astronaut or President of the United States. So, he read law at Cambridge.

Then, a family tragedy prompted him to take up acting. He graduated from RADA in 1994 and has pursued his creative passions ever since. He says, I have an itchy brain. If I get offered something I think might be interesting or looks like a laugh or is something I'm curious about, I find it hard to say no.

Stephen Mangan, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. So let's start with that itchy brain of yours, Stephen. You're reading prospective scripts. What gets it going? I think you have to pick something that you think, I would love to watch this. Because otherwise, how do you...

have the right sensibility to be involved. So if it was a big superhero show or something, which I have no particular fondness for or interest in, I probably wouldn't do it. Not that I've been offered that many. But I think just something you think there's something about this, the writing, the characters, the setting. I would love to watch this. And then you're in.

And obviously in recent years, thanks to the hosting that you do, the presenting that you do, the public have maybe got more of a sense of you as a person, the affable man that you really are, which is, it's a bit of a contrast to your early roles because TV shows like Green Wing, the characters you were playing in those early days were often absolute swines. Yeah. Is that something that you enjoyed, unleashing that dark side? Oh, I loved it. I mean, they're the best parts. You get to release all that stuff, those little bits of you, the little corners of your personality. Yeah.

that you don't dare reveal or you just don't like to reveal or you keep hidden and you get to give them full...

Those parts are a joy, especially Guy Secretan in Green Wing. He was so obnoxious. One of your big TV breaks was playing Adrian Mole in the 2001 series The Cappuccino Years. The character's creator, Sue Townsend, had the final say on casting. What do you remember about meeting her? She was a hero of mine. I thought she was the most fantastic woman. She was so encouraging and welcoming. But when I auditioned for the part, she was starting to lose her sight completely.

And eventually she lost it completely. But at that point she could just still see, but not very well. And she explained to me in the audition that Adrian is just not a good looking man. The actor who played him cannot be handsome. Adrian is a geek. He's pretentious. He's all sorts of things, but he's not good looking. And then she asked if she could have a good look at my face.

She pulled out a huge magnifying glass. She came up to within six inches of my face and she scanned me from top to bottom and said, you're perfect. How did you feel in that moment? What mixed emotions? I mean, mixed emotions is right. Delighted to get the part. But yeah, it's not what you imagine when you're a child in your bedroom thinking one day maybe I'll be Bond. And in that moment, I knew I never would be.

And what about music? How big a part does that play in your life? You're choosing your discs today. Yeah, I chose music that reminded me of time and place and people rather than the eight tracks I love the most, even though these all have a special place in my heart. But yeah, it's...

It's quite a challenge. It's quite interesting. I'm not someone who looks back a lot. So it was really interesting to look at that final list of eight tracks and think, wow, that kind of does sum up my life in a weird way.

Well, I can't wait to get started. Tell us about your first. My parents had an automatic record player, a red with a lid, and one of those you could pile seven or eight 45s on and they would drop down. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. And they had a whole box of 45s, a whole box of singles. And my sisters and I, Anita and Lisa, would play all the records all the time. And my mum was a big Elvis fan. There was a lot of early 50s and 60s American music playing.

But there was one song we loved playing, which was King of the Road by Roger Miller. And it just reminds me of those hours and days and weeks and months that you spend with your siblings, being stupid with each other, being silly, making each other laugh, playing records. And this was the one I remember the most, especially because of, I ain't got no cigarettes. So that would always make you laugh? Yeah. Trailer for sale or rent?

Rooms to let 50 cents. No phone, no pool, no pets. I ain't got no cigarettes. Ah, but two hours of push and broom buys a 8x12 4-bit room. I'm a man of means, by no means king of the road.

Roger Miller and King of the Road. So, Stephen Mangan, you're the eldest of three children born to Mary and James in North London. Both your mum and dad left Ireland to make their lives here in the UK. How did they actually meet? Well, they knew of each other. They're from villages two miles apart in Mayo, but they just went to different schools. Both came over here in their teens, as did all of their brothers and sisters. My dad has four brothers and four sisters, mum five brothers and a sister. Everyone migrated from

for economic reasons, to London. All my uncles and my dad were all labourers. The thing you did was you went to the pub owned by someone from back home. And the pub that they would all hang out in was the Camden Stores on Parkway in Camden. My mum was a barmaid there and dad would go in there and then they'd go dancing at the Camden Palais or the Galtimore. And they got married very young. Mum was only 21. But I think they both loved London. They really...

blossomed here, that neither of them had a particularly good education. In fact, they had a terrible education. They left school at 14. They were both very bright people.

And I think they were just bowled over by the food, the theatre, the cinema, everything that London had to offer. And they took advantage of that, didn't they? They really did, yeah. They were sort of autodidacts and travelled a huge amount. And they loved life. They were really happy together, very much in love. We had a very funny, happy household there.

And they travelled the world. So they're both from big Catholic families. Were you and your sisters brought up going to church and all of that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, you had to go to church. Mass at 10.15 every Sunday. I quickly realised that...

If I was going to have to be there, it was better to be on the stage than in the audience. So I signed up to be an altar boy just to be busy. I mean, here we go, the seeds of my life already. I didn't want to sit there for an hour doing nothing. Did you get to swing the incense and everything? I call it an incense solo. I had to come out to the front. LAUGHTER

Bell ringing, preparing the communion, you know, you were busy. So you mentioned that when your dad first came over, he was labouring like his brothers and your mum was working in the bar. How did things progress for them? What did they do for a living as you were growing up? Dad and his brother set up a company together, Mangan Brothers Limited, and they did start to do very well in construction, ended up building petrol stations, basically. Mum had me a year after they got married and

and became a full-time mum. So your sisters are Anita and Lisa and I think Lisa was named after your mum's love of Elvis. Yeah Lisa Marie yeah okay do you know it's an interesting thing because they came over in the early 60s at the height of that no dogs no blacks no Irish kind of you know I don't think it was yeah it was a burden I think being Irish or it was certainly not you weren't made to feel that welcome. We're called Stephen Anita and Lisa we're not called Bridget, Eamon and

I don't know whether there was a subconscious wanting to free us from kind of what she felt was prejudice against her. The whole country was awash with Irish jokes about how thick the Irish were. They were always proud of being Irish. But I suppose they didn't want us to inherit that burden. The negative side. The negative side of it, yeah. And did you feel connected to Ireland culturally? Oh, we were there all the time. We spent every summer there.

The really long journey, you'd have to drive up to Liverpool, eight hour ferry from Liverpool to Dublin, six and a half hour drive from Dublin. It took a day and a half to get to the West Coast. So it felt like you're going to the other side of the earth. And once we were over there, often we'd just be left there for the summer and the last uncle or aunt coming back would bring us back. Time to turn to the music again. Disc number two, what are we going to hear?

So my uncles, Eamon and Michael, had a dance hall and we would go there from a young age. We'd get to go backstage into the band room. A huge dance hall, probably anything from 600 to 1,200, 1,400 people in this. Where was this? This is in Belmullet. This is in the sort of nearest big town to where my parents grew up.

We would go and either sit in the band room if we were very little and watch the action from the side of the stage. When we got a bit older, we'd serve in the bar. But dance wouldn't start till midnight or one in the morning. The energy coming off this crowd of drunk, of lust, of excitement, all of that, which was just very eye-opening. And then travelling back to... I often stayed with my uncle Michael, who lived in Ballinards, about an hour's drive...

And we would listen to this album, the Don Williams album, and all my uncles seemed to have this album, Don Williams' greatest hits, on my mum's side and my dad's side. I don't know what it is. It's just something about it. It's become a sort of family anthem, and we play it all the time. It just reminds me of sitting in a car late at night, going through the Mayo countryside with my family, feeling part of a family and loving it. I recall a gypsy woman

Silver spangles in her eyes Ivory skin against the moonlight And the taste of life's sweet wine

Don Williams, and I recall a gypsy woman. Stephen, you were eight years old when you first trod the boards in a school play. The piece in question was Beauty and the Beast. Tell me everything. Well, you know, a groundbreaking, avant-garde, paradigm-shifting production of Beauty and the Beast. I mean, obviously, I played Beauty, all boys' school. I had an auburn wig and an emerald green dress. I don't remember a lot about it, actually. It wasn't a revelatory performance, but I do...

remember that I was hugely encouraged by one teacher in particular called Peter Nixon who I'm still in touch with and see all the time who you know just gave me more and more interesting parts and we made films animated films and he introduced me to books so really the whole thing is sort of his fault. And do you have that memory that actors often do of the first laugh the first round of applause? I don't have that memory because I was getting all that at home

From my sisters, my parents, and we were all laughing at each other. It wasn't like I was standing on a table and everyone was applauding me. I think it's prized in Ireland, I think, you know, away with words. Being good with words and being funny was always prized in our house. And your mum absolutely loved the theatre. Yeah. Did she take you with her? She took me all the time. And mum and I would often go see two or three plays in my half term. I queued up all night to go and see Anthony Sher play Richard III.

And then it was so hot in the theatre and I hadn't slept all night that I fell asleep in the second half. LAUGHTER

I mean, I must have seen 20 shows a year. So quite a Catholic taste by the sound of it as well, a bit of everything. Yeah, a bit of everything. And so at 13, you went to a different school to your siblings. You won a scholarship to quite a prestigious boarding school, Haleybury College in Hertfordshire. And it had been your idea to apply, I think. What were you expecting? I think I'd read too many Ina Blyton books. I thought it was going to be fun and excitement and adventure. My parents didn't want me to go.

It was so alien to the way that they'd been brought up. The idea of sending your child away just seemed weird and unnatural. But I was adamant that I wanted to go. And then because I won a scholarship, I could. And I hated it. I hated the first two years. I was really bullied. I was homesick. I felt I couldn't tell my parents because I knew how upset they were that I was going in the first place. And I didn't want to make them more upset. So you had to double down. So I sort of doubled down and...

It was horrible. Boarding schools, I'm sure, have changed a lot. But the problem is, you know, it's why shows like Big Brother work, because you're never off camera, as it were. And eventually you crack and, you know, you can't escape. And it's the same is true at boarding school. You're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So you felt that pressure cooker. Yeah. You felt watched. I felt that I couldn't escape anything.

And I was small for my age. You know, I was probably quite chatty and confident and, you know, just sort of a little boy ripe to be bullied, I suppose, really. And I probably didn't handle it very well. But then slowly I got older. The bullying stopped. I made friends and things improved. And I, you know, girls arrived in the sixth form.

And that changed my world. In fact, I joined the choir as a smaller boy just to be around the older girls because it was a break from the dormitory and getting hit in the face with a pillow. You said you made friends. I mean, who were your people? Was it a case of finding your tribe a little bit? I started to get leads in plays because I was now being considered for the school plays.

I formed a band. It was a prog rock band, I think. Yeah, it was, yeah. Tell me more. Always on trend, me. We had several names. We were Dragonfly for a while. We ended up as Aragon. Oh, nice. We released an EP called The Wizard's Dream.

With a 15-minute song called The Dragon, which is about the troubles in Northern Ireland. Reflections of the Reaper was another track. What was your role in the band? I was the keyboard player and I think on the thing it said backing vocals, keyboards and jokes. I blush now at that, but you know, it's... You've always been multi-hyphenate then. Yeah, yeah. And that kind of adventurous creativity, it sounds like that was in you right from the beginning, was it, to try a lot of different things? It was, and I think the lesson I learned was...

Stop trying to fit in with what other people want. Because I think that's what I probably spent my first two years going. This is not working. What do they want from me? Trying to conform. Trying to conform. And then eventually you go, do you know what? I'm just going to be what I'm like. And if people don't like it, then, you know, what are you going to do? It's funny that, isn't it? Because often that kind of integrity has its own power. Yeah. And actually then you find your strength inside yourself. But also people respond to you in a different way. People know then what they're dealing with. Because you're saying, well, this is who I am. So they have something to...

I'm in Aragon, I'm the keyboard player. I'm the guy with the eyeliner on playing keyboard solos. I had two keyboards. I put one on the left and one on the right so I could sort of Rick Wakeman it away. Rick Wakeman style, yeah. Yeah, that was fun. Did you have a cape? I didn't ever go as far as the cape, but if I could turn back time, I would. Yeah.

Well, I think as we've been talking about music, Stephen, we should have another track from you now. Your third choice today. This is a hugely important part of my life. Louise and I have got three boys, Harry, Frank and Jack. And there is that wonderful time after your baby's born, from the moment it's born really, where you just fall head over heels and sopperly in love with this little bundle of flesh. And you become one of those people who can't stop showing photos to everybody or talking about your child and how wonderful they are. But...

It's a magical thing. I remember my dad telling me when I was younger that he used to sit on the edge of my cot and just look at me and my sisters and just cry with sort of joy and overwhelm, you know, the magic of it all. And I found myself doing the same thing. You just fall hopelessly in love with these beautiful, magical things that have appeared. And this is a very sentimental song. And it's John Lennon going through the same thing, you can hear.

But I play this for my three beautiful boys. John Lennon and Beautiful Boy.

So Stephen Mangan, after leaving school, you decided to study law at Cambridge University, which is obviously quite a different path from the career you've since created. Why did you choose that subject? I really don't know. I did split A level. I did maths, further maths.

English and history. So I sort of did half arts, half science-y kind of stuff. And people said to me, oh, law's creative, but it's also logical. And you like acting, then barristers get to stand up in court. And I just didn't know what else to do, I think, really. Obviously, a very prestigious course to take. I'm wondering if there was a sense that, you know, it was for your mum and dad. I think that's a huge part of it. And I think as well, my parents having not had the chance to get any education, that

valued it hugely. They were very proud and I think they also thought if you go to university do something practical, something useful because that's just the way they thought. That's the way they looked, especially dad would look at the world. And I think I knew within the first three weeks that it just wasn't for me. Why not? What was it like?

certain parts of the law about taking very human situations and trying to strip the emotion out of it and try and look at coldly at intention and what people were thinking to take the heat out of it and to me the heat is the interesting bit it's the opposite of acting that isn't it it's the opposite it really is the opposite of acting

I think I needed to go to drama school afterwards, partly to get that way of thinking out of my head. That very clinical, logical way of thinking is not particularly helpful always as an actor. So at university, obviously, you know, there's a lot of extracurricular stuff going on at Cambridge, very famous for its Footlights group. It's launched many a show business career. Did you get involved? No, I didn't. I went along...

I went along for an audition and I must have got somebody on a bad day, but it just struck me as incredibly cliquey, a closed shop. I just felt so unwelcome and out of it. I thought, I'll just go and be in plays. So I did that. I think I was in 21 plays in my three years. So where were you doing that? Who with? All sorts of people. And I worked with Jess Butterworth.

Paul Ritter was a really good friend of mine. And some colleges have a little theatre. And so if you're a director, you apply to a college and say, I want to put on theatre.

Hamlet and they give you a little bit of money for some scenery and then you go and cast it university-wide so there's auditions going on all the time for various plays in various colleges you become part of a gang this little network and also you know I'm wondering at this time how you felt about what you were doing because when you were younger it had been a hobby but you must have been with people who were like well this is I think this is what I want to do did that start to rub off on you

Had you started to nurse ambitions of your own? Completely. My friends there were people like Mel Gedroich and Sue Perkins and...

Nicola Walker, who I've worked with recently on The Split, Rachel Weisz, Tom Hollander, all these people are there saying, we're off to become actors. And you think, oh, all right, well, maybe that is something I could do. If I can get around to telling my parents I don't want to do law anymore. You did complete your law degree and I saw a lovely picture of you and your mum on graduation day. When you see that photo, what do you think of? I think how...

incredibly different my life was from hers. It's really astonishing to think of the change in one generation. She was brought up in a one-bedroom house, five brothers and a sister, dad away in England working on the building sites. It was a one room that had basically room for two double beds and a fireplace. There was no running water, no electricity, no plumbing, nothing.

And to go from that to have a child that has the opportunity to end up getting a law degree is an incredible leap. I'd love for her to have had that chance. She must have been so proud. I think she was, yeah. I think she was. I also look at that photo because she got ill shortly afterwards. So I look at that photo and I can see that she's not well. At the time, we didn't realise that in September of that year,

We realised how ill she was and the whole world changed. So she was diagnosed with cancer, with bowel cancer, and you went home. You took a year out after you needed to look after her. Yeah. We were having dinner in September. Mum and I were alone and she got up from the table and I found her a few minutes later. She was doubled over in the living room. She had quite advanced bowel cancer and

And it just made sense for me to hang around and help out. I didn't want to go and do anything else. I wanted to be there at home and I was lucky enough to have the chance to do that. What we didn't know in September was that she would be dead six months later. And I'm forever grateful that I could spend that time at home. You've got to remember, I'd been to boarding school for five years. I'd been away at university for three years.

So I hadn't been around that much during the previous few years. So I took the opportunity to help out and be there with both hands. I think sometimes people don't understand, you know, when you say I'm grateful that I got that opportunity to care for her at the end of her life. People who haven't been through that might not understand what a kind of intimate privilege it is to do that for someone. Yeah. The person who brought you up and looked after you

All your life. And I think it's just to be there with them, part more than anything else, to be next to them and to be there as a family. And we would, you know, mum was young, she was 45. So there's all sorts of people, a big family, the people were coming over every evening. Friends were coming over to see her. There'd be always dinners and laughter and stuff going on in the house. And I'm glad I got that opportunity. It's horrendous.

To be in that position that she was in and know that you're that ill and you don't have long left. And we didn't talk about it explicitly. But for the family who left behind to have that chance to do something and to start that process of grieving and to say goodbye, yeah, it's kind of priceless. Let's have some more music, Stephen. Your fourth choice.

I've always been conscious of time passing. I don't know whether it's a melancholy kind of, whether it's an Irish thing, parents who had to leave home and move on, you know, that slightly wistful feeling. Longing. Yeah, that longing. That's very much in me. And so who knows where the time goes? Fairport Convention. I know that you've sung this at a folk festival. I have sung this at a folk festival. With Richard Thompson.

I mean, Richard Thompson, who's a sort of godlike talent, he obviously played the guitar for Fairport Convention and sang on the version we're going to hear. It's one of those ridiculous things you get to do when you're on the telly, that you can't believe your luck. But someone, you know, would you like to go and sing? Just the two of us, two guitars, and just singing. He'd just done an entire set headlining the Cambridge Folk Festival in front of 7,000 or 8,000 people. And at the end of his set, he said, now Stephen Mangan. And the crowd went, what? What?

And I came out and sang this with him. It's a very hard song to sing, but it's a beautiful song and feeling of time slipping away. I'm always conscious of it. Fairport Convention and who knows where the time goes.

So Stephen, after your mum died you decided to go back to university. At this time though, it was RADA. What did your dad make of your decision? My mum died at 45, her mum had died at 47. So things didn't look good, you know, for our longevity and I think he just understood, you know, everything gets thrown up in the air when something like that happens.

And I think the fact that I got a degree from a good university and taken that as far as I wanted to, and the fact I think I got into RADA as well was a kind of seal of official approval that actually this wasn't just a pipe dream. I just thought, I can't, if I really have 20 years left, I want to be an actor. Did you tell her about it? I did tell her that I had an audition, yeah. That's as much as she ever knew. She must have loved that. She did, I think. And then I think the actual audition was 10 or 11 days after she died.

And it's so unimportant at that point. You don't go in all a bag of nerves. You're like, well, here I am. Take me or leave me.

And it worked. And did you just feel like you'd found your groove? I mean, in terms of the actual work that you were doing, you must have relished that and to escape into that as well. I mean, when you're grieving, it's really powerful. Yeah. I mean, you have imposter syndrome walking in because you walk into this lobby and all the names on the boards of all the famous actors who've been there and the busts. It's very intimidating. And you quickly imagine that they're going to point to you and go, I'm sorry, we made a mistake.

But I realised almost immediately that I was in the right place, doing the right thing. And that was a big relief.

And then after you graduated, you spent seven years working all over the country in theatre. Now, apparently you turned down a lot of film and TV offers, everything else you didn't do. Tell me about that. Yeah, well, I wanted to be a good actor. That was the plan. I wanted to be the best actor I could be. And I figured the way to do that was to play the great classical theatre parts. And I didn't want to be the fifth person from the right at the National or the RSC. I wanted to play the main parts.

So if I had to go to York or Edinburgh or Norwich or wherever it was to do that, that's what I was going to do. And I did that for five years. And I got an agent at RADA and she would phone me every now and again saying Merchant Ivory are making a film. And I'd say, no, I want to go and do a play at Salisbury Playhouse. All those books I'd read about actors and how they started, they all seemed to start in rep. So I was sort of trying to create my own version of rep. And did it work? How was it? How did it feel? It was great. I loved it.

Because you start again every place you go. You reinvent yourself. You get to try on a new way of being. You're playing a new part. I got to play all the sort of heroic juvenile leads because the audience are 40 feet minimum away from you. They're not like Sue Townsend, six inches from your face. So my slightly wonky face didn't matter. I could play the sort of heroic characters. And I loved it. And I think I learned a huge amount.

It wasn't all Shakespeare and Chekhov for you, though, because I know you had a side hustle working on foreign commercials to pay the bills. Yeah. What kind of parts were you getting? Commercials then tended to be a very beautiful woman and, let me say, a characterful man who could drink a coffee or eat a slice of a cake or something and pull a face that made you laugh.

and made you think that looks delicious and I seem to be able to do that really well. So you were developing a niche? My first audition was up some rickety stairs in Soho. There was a sweaty middle-aged man at the top with a camera. He said, sit in the chair, take your top off, look into the camera, say your name and growl like a tiger.

I thought, here we go. I ended up in South Africa advertising. That was a chewing gum advert. Wearing a thong in a jacuzzi with five beautiful women and me chewing chewing gum in a characterful way. Is it on the internet now? Luckily, no.

So a little bit later, the TV roles started coming your way. You moved into that zone. One of your best-loved characters was the anaesthetist Guy Secretan from the hospital comedy Green Wing. There was so much buzz about that show and it's still beloved by people. How did it feel to be part of it? Because it does sound like the company that you're part of and the creative process has always been a big part of the attraction of any given project for you. It has, and it just had an incredible cast. It was.

We were all in it together. We all had a stake in making it work. We were involved in the writing. And there's a bit of improvisation too as well. I mean, it was the most expensive comedy I think Channel 4 have ever made because they had eight or nine writers who would each write a version of the scene.

We'd then get together, we'd read all the different versions, we'd stand on our feet, we'd improvise our own version. They take all the best bits of all of that. That's a time consuming process that doesn't happen because it's too expensive. But the results are there to see. It works. And I absolutely loved it. That to me was the perfect way of working. It was egalitarian. It was fun.

You could throw out as many ideas as you wanted and you had somebody with taste and comic brains to pick all the best ones. So you didn't have to worry about, you know, throwing out a bad idea because that process would be dealt with by somebody else. You know when you're in a show like that and all you're talking about, you should see what Mark Heap did yesterday. He leapt out of a cupboard in his pants playing the recorder or whatever it was. We all knew it was going to be good. I was getting my revenge on the boarding school.

Because I was playing that entitled, arrogant public school boy. Because remember, I've got this split personality. I've got this sort of working class Irish family, but this posh public school schooling. So I was an outsider and an insider of that public school life. And I just had a lot of fun taking the mickey out of it.

It's time for some more music, Stephen. Your fifth choice, what's it going to be? One day filming Green Wing, we started an episode with a spoof of Staying Alive. I got to be John Travolta in a white suit. It just typified the way we worked. There was a brilliant script written, but on the day, the floor is thrown open. Who's got a gun idea? Who wants to do this? Who wants to do that? And it's just a fantastic way of working. And whenever I hear this song...

It takes me back to those glorious days of working on Greenling. And happily, that clip is on the internet. Oh, yes, it is. MUSIC PLAYS

The Bee Gees and Stayin' Alive. Stephen Mangan, you went on to star with fellow Green Wing actor Tamsin Gregg in five series of episodes and that also featured Friends star Matt LeBlanc. How did it feel to make that transition to LA? Because the show is about a husband and wife duo going to Hollywood to remake a hit TV series. Yeah, the whole thing's set in LA. We filmed it all in Wimbledon.

It's much cheaper to film over here. In fact, it's about half the cost. So there was a lot of time spent in convertible sports cars at two in the morning in a sort of polo shirt trying to pretend it's 30 degrees when in fact it's four degrees. So none of it was shot in LA? We started to go out there for the exteriors from the second series on. And in fact, one of the series was about half and half, but...

That world is so ripe for parody, but I think a lot of American writers and producers don't want to parody it because they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. But David Crane and Geoffrey Clarick, who wrote it,

I mean, David was one of the three creators of Friends. Jeffrey's had a huge career as a writer and creator in the States as well. They've made their millions and they had no problem in satirising the ridiculousness of the sort of TV industry. And how did you feel about it then? So you started to go out there. How did you fit into the American machine? I mean, it is very different. I found it very hard to...

tell everyone how great I was because that's what you kind of need to do. If you're diffident and British about it and they say you're amazing and you say, oh, well, I'm not that, they'll just move on to the next person who does think they're amazing.

I met a manager who said, I've seen everything you've ever done. I said, oh, thanks very much. He said, I'm your biggest fan, Simon. Stephen. Stephen. All that sort of nonsense I can't take seriously. It's sort of death by encouragement. I've had agents asking me to come and move out and managers saying, please move out here. It just doesn't suit my personality. I'm sure I could have earned a lot more money, but...

But the idea of sitting in a house and not working but waiting for that one massive job, I'd rather be doing what I'm doing, which is all the little bits and pieces that I do. That makes me much happier. Stephen, it's time to hear your next track. What have you got for us and why are you taking it to the island? In 2005, my dad, James, who...

was 62 in March that year. He started getting severe headaches and we discovered that he had a brain tumour. And in a really strange echo of my mum's story, he died six months after his diagnosis as well. And again, I was...

lucky enough to be around to help him out. We were actually filming the second series of Green Wing and they shut the whole production down for 10 days in order so that I could be there. But that must have been very difficult for you going from a fictional hospital to your dad's bedside. It was really, really odd, especially in the early days of him getting diagnosed. We'd go to a hospital and hear some very serious and awful news and then I would put on a white coat and go and be daft as Guy Secretan and

So yes, again, I was lucky enough with my sisters to be there and to look after him. Brain tumours, they can be quite distressing. There's no pain for the patient, but they do have seizures and things which are hard to cope with. When Dad and I were alone, we would listen to this next track a lot. I think he found it quite relaxing. I know I did. It's the second movement of Ravel's Piano Concerto. And there's something about it

When you move from the world of the well into the world of the unwell, and they are two very separate worlds, especially when things are getting pretty serious towards the end, you are living in this... You're living from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, going through the various procedures and processes. And it's just a case of putting one foot in front of the other. It's very hard to sometimes take in the bigger picture of what's going on. You're just living moment to moment...

And there's something about this piece of music, it feels like a musical embodiment of that state. The Adagio from Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major, played by Marta Ahurich with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Claudio Abado. For your dad, Stephen Mangan, and that time that you had together at the very end of his life.

You lost both your parents very young. That must have shaped your own outlook and who you've become. Yeah, I mean, I think having the parents that I have shaped me more. They were bright, life-loving, warm, delightful people. But I can't get away from the fact that, yeah, I never got to know my mum as an adult, and that hurts. Mum never met Louise, she didn't meet my kids. You know, it's her loss, the loss...

For her, it stuck with me. But I'm grateful to have had them as parents. I lucked out. And I think I look at it that way, rather than have parents who live to be 110, who you don't get on with or you don't like. And you've kept a very close relationship with your sisters, one of whom you have a creative partnership with, Anita. She illustrates the children's books that you write. How have you managed to keep a sense of togetherness in the family?

Well, I think it's always there because we were so close as kids. When Dad died, we bought a little place in the countryside, all three of us, that we could share and go to and use as a family. Because you no longer have a family home to go to or a place where you can gather. So we got somewhere and they are the people who made me, my mum, my dad, my sisters. From that little family unit, everything else in my life has sprung.

You're a dad of three sons yourself. Your career can take you away for considerable stretches of time. How do you reconcile that with fatherhood and also your time is short outlook? It's really tough. It's really tough on Louise. Having an actor slash presenter, whatever I am as a partner, is tough because there's no routine involved.

Last year I was away out of the country for two or three months. This year I'm doing a play in the West End and that means I'm out six nights of the week. It's really tough and she's the one that fills in all those gaps. I went to Broadway. I got back after six months away. They'd only been able to come out for a week or so and my eldest, who was then three years old, called me Uncle Stephen when I got back. But I then found out Louise made him say that for a joke.

You must have been crushed, though. I was. I was, but it's quite a funny gag. With actors for parents, I mean, two actors, have any of them expressed an interest in following in your footsteps? I think they're all into it. I've become like my dad. I want them to get a good education first, so they're not being put up for child acting roles and stuff like that. But I would be... Listen, it's been a wonderful, wonderful life for me. Why would I not wish that on them?

It's time for your next disc, Stephen Rangan, your penultimate choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

When I was at university, I became very good friends with Paul Ritter, who a lot of people will know from Friday Night Dinner. He played the dad and lots of other parts. But we were mates. We were in a play together at university and we used to sit in our rooms and try and imagine what it would be like to be professional actors. I remember one conversation in particular, we were saying how lovely it would be to just be leaving your digs on a Thursday morning in York or Liverpool or...

and just going to the theatre to do a matinee, to be paid to be an actor. How incredible and how unattainable that seemed at the time. 20 years later, Paul and I were in a play at the Old Vic, The Norman Conquests, that transferred to Broadway. It was a huge hit on Broadway. The play won a Tony. Paul was nominated for a Tony Award. I was nominated for a Tony Award. So...

It was a lovely moment of the two mates going from sitting in a room wondering if we would ever work as actors for a living and ending up on Broadway. And so I used to play this a lot when I was in America, when I was in New York. It's Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, and I think it would be great on the island, partly because that first glissando is one of the most uplifting and joyful things in all of music. MUSIC PLAYS

Tell us about it.

Yeah, so the idea is that there is an island, as we know there is, of course, and all of us castaways are there. I'm the new arrival. And it's full of all the luxury items that people have brought. There's a lot of smashed up pianos and coffee machines. There's Bibles everywhere. And it's awash with singles as well, all the records that have been chosen. Everyone's gone very feral.

One person is sort of running a particular group with a rod of iron and a reign of terror. That's Sandy Toksvig. Wow. Yeah, so quite a bit of artistic license taking them. Oh, yeah. Hugh Bonneville's gone rogue. He's got his top off. He's in the river trying to catch salmon. So, yeah, it's fun. It's a really fun imagining of the island that you've created. What made you laugh the most? I mean, you've got Delia Smith treating you quite badly. Martin Lewis starting up a rival evil gang. It's just the idea of all these...

People have been cast away by you and all the previous Desert Island Discs hosts having to get on and descending into a Lord of the Flies chaos and mayhem. It's just, it's a treat. Well, you've had a bit of practice for what comes next, at least, Steve, and you're going to be cast away on your desert island. How are your survival skills? Survival skills are pretty good. I mean, being the son of a builder, I was the only boy in the family. I was always purloined to help with plumbing, electricals,

cement mixing, brick laying. So I'm pretty good. You're handy. Yeah, I'm pretty handy. How will you be with the solitude? I like solitude. I'm an extrovert hermit. I quite like being on my own and I find I need it more and more. I think maybe because a lot of my work life is so social and gregarious and

that I need that time to be alone. I don't think I'll have a problem with being on my own. What about eating, feeding yourself? That might be a problem, yeah. Well, firstly, I can't tell a good berry from a bad berry, so I'll probably eat the wrong one and keel over in the first day. I'm not a great cook. I don't really have any interest in cooking, so I'm going to have to learn pretty sharpish. What sort of island are you imagining? I'm imagining somewhere lush and green, big, quite humid and warm,

I can run around wearing a thong or eating chewing gum from Estonia, probably, and growling at the camera. Back in your loincloth at last. Yeah. Well, one more disc before we send you there, Stephen Mungin, your final choice today. What have you got for us? My wife, Louise, I've always wanted this song to be our song.

And she's always explained to me that that's not how our songs work. There has to be some sort of history or reason behind it. So she's always resisted the idea this is our song. For her, this is a song that she loved and introduced me to. But this is my island and my list. So this is our song. Well, then now, you know, by the act of being on Desert Island Discs and declaring it so, surely there's an inception point there, isn't there? Exactly. You hear that, Louise? Yes.

And it's for her because none of anything I've done could have been done without her. And she's not just held it all together. She's held it all together while pursuing her own career and bringing up our three beautiful boys. So it's Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson. I'll be acting higher Love me more Letting me higher

Jackie Wilson, Higher and Higher. So Stephen Mang and the time has come. I'm going to cast you away to the island and I will give you the books to take with you. The Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare and another book of your choice. What's that going to be? I don't have enough time to sit and read poetry and I love poetry so I'm going to have the time to read poetry.

And I'm going to choose some Irish poetry. I'm going to take the collective works of Seamus Heaney. Oh, lovely. Yeah, absolutely. And what about your luxury item? I play the piano and the guitar, but I never get enough time to do that either. So I've got to bring a piano. I know a lot of people do. So there'll be lots of pianos on the island. But the thought of being able to sit, there's something so cathartic and joyful about

in sitting down and losing yourself in playing the piano. I've always felt that I, a bit like those school reports, he could have done better. He didn't live up to his promise. I could have been a better piano player and I want to be a better piano player. So this is my chance. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves first? Let me think. Wow. I'm going to take a joyful one. I'm going to take Stayin' Alive because that's what I'm going to be trying to do.

Stephen Mangan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you. Hello. It was lovely to chat to Stephen and I hope he's very happy on his island playing his piano.

There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to, including Adrian Mole's creator, Sue Townsend. You can hear her programme if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylance, and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my guest will be the campaigner, Mina Smallman. MUSIC PLAYS

Stephen Mangan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you. On BBC Radio 4... There were timber shelters with roofs of what looked like black slate tiles, which I later realised were actually thousands of seven-inch singles. What happens to the castaways after appearing on Desert Island Discs? We stood for a moment...

watching Gok Wan stalking a cormorant. Stephen Mangan finds out... Paralympic swimmer Ellie Simmons was mending a bamboo rain gutter. And discovers he's not alone. Hugh Bonneville has become a problem. The Island. Listen on BBC Sounds.