Simon Bird: 'People will shout briefcase w**ker at me until the day I die'
The impact of The Inbetweeners lives on...
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Known by many as Will from The Inbetweeners, Simon Bird has since gone on to star in several beloved series across comedy and beyond.
That hasn't stopped people from shouting Inbetweeners references at him, though...
Speaking in the latest Radio Times magazine, he discusses his view from the sofa, TV turn-offs and more.
What's the view from your sofa?
I wish I knew. My wife and I tend to watch TV in bed, hunched over my tiny laptop, sharing a set of primitive, fraying earphones, so we don’t wake the kids [Bird has an eight- and six-year-old with author Lisa Owens]. It’s a bleak and tragic image.
Which perhaps answers the second question: who controls the TV remote?
It depends on who wins the daily and increasingly violent fight between my son and daughter. My daughter has the advantage in terms of height and reach, but my son’s not afraid to play dirty, so it’s impossible to call. We try and find stuff the whole family would like – I’m talking Bluey, Gladiators, Race Across the World, all the classics.
What have you enjoyed watching recently on the laptop?
At the risk of sounding full centrist dad and quasi-nostalgic, emotionally manipulative sports documentaries like The Last Dance and 99. My wife and I are also in pretty deep with Couples Therapy on iPlayer. It’s a documentary following couples through relationship counselling. We identify with opposing members of each couple, and the rush of satisfaction when the therapist sides with my member of the couple gives me a spring in my step for days.
Any TV turn-offs?
I find it hard to watch comedy now, partly because it feels like a busman’s holiday, but primarily because I’m at heart an intensely competitive and jealous person, and if it’s good I want to be in it.
What was your biggest TV influence?
The Office. It felt like an unprecedented comedy that didn’t rely on punchlines or farcical plots, just satirising the way people talk and behave in the real world.
I found that electrifying as a teenager. There was a time I could have recited the Christmas specials word for word.
Did that inspire you to start acting?
I don’t think so. I never had ambitions to be an actor. I joined Footlights at university for a laugh. We took a show to the Edinburgh Fringe, and Iain Morris, who created The Inbetweeners, saw it and started paying me and Joe Thomas £25 a week to write jokes for his XFM radio show. When we finished university, we set up shop in his office and refused to leave. Two years later, we bullied him into letting us be in The Inbetweeners.
Did you ever worry about being pigeonholed after The Inbetweeners?
Robert Popper was a script editor on the series, then put me in for Friday Night Dinner. It was pure nepotism, and meant I moved on quite quickly. But people still shout Inbetweeners lines at me in the street. If I’m walking my kids, they do check themselves a bit before screaming briefcase w****r at me. But that won’t stop to the day I die, and nor should it.
Everyone Else Burns is a departure for you — and for sitcoms. Puritanical Christian cults preparing for the apocalypse aren't your usual fare?
It sounds edgy to set it inside a bizarre Christian sect, but the comic challenges the Lewis family face are universal. Me and Kate O’Flynn are parents struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing world, and our kids are dealing with overbearing parents. On one level it’s a Manchester family in a puritanical cult, on another level it’s very relatable.
You've played a teenager in two sitcoms. How does it feel to finally play your age?
I did suddenly grow up, I guess, playing a father. I’ve just turned 40 and almost immediately pulled a muscle in my back. When I tell anyone over 40 I hurt my back, they just say, "Welcome to the world."
The Christian press love the show. Has anyone been offended?
No one has complained. No one Jewish complained about Friday Night Dinner. And I actually think this is the most traditional series I’ve done. It’s a traditional family sitcom wrapped inside something subversive.
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Everyone Else Burns is available to watch on Channel 4.
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