Why comedy actor Ben Miller has no regrets about swapping nuclear physics for comedy

AND to think . . . Ben Miller, left, acclaimed comedy actor and one half of sketch show kings Armstrong and Miller, could have ended up as a physicist.

The science world’s loss is the comedy world’s gain.

Ben, who was born and brought up in Nantwich and attended Malbank School, came to comedy via a circuitous route – which involved working on a PhD in physics at Cambridge.

He recalls: “I know I was heading down the physics route but I didn’t ever think I would be a physicist. It sounds bizarre, but even though I was going for a PhD in nuclear physics I was doing it for fun and was interested in it.

“I always knew I would have to find something else to do. Believe it or not, I thought about being a musician at one point and I even got a band together – that didn’t really work out.

“So I thought I would try my hand at comedy and acting, and that really did work out, so I stuck with it. By the time I was doing my PhD, I had to decide what I was going to do. When I was at university, I did a bit of acting and thought ‘this is my thing, this is what I’m good at, thank God!’ I was interested in physics but I wasn’t exactly a gifted physicist. It was fun to find something that you really love and feel that you’re good at.”

Ben is especially good at playing comedic characters on the edge – the edge of slapstick and farce – like Howard Steele in The Worst Week Of My Life and, of course, Jonathan Pope in Moving Wallpaper.

He says: “Playing Jonathan gives me quite a bit of wishful thinking as he gets to do all the kinds of things in his life that I would like to do in mine, including being in charge.”

Although, for the second series, which sees Pope producing a zombie drama called Renaissance, Ben was itching to play a very different character.

He explains: “I would have loved to have been a zombie in the show! I have already been a zombie and Jonathan kind of develops a zombie impersonation in the new series – he will be a zombie at any opportunity.

If, hypothetically, there was a zombie apocalypse, I think I would do something that no one ever seems to do in zombie films and pretend to be a zombie. Everybody seems to scream and run away, but I would call the zombies’ bluff and act like a zombie, mingle a bit – long enough to get away.”

Like the show’s writer and creator, Tony Jordan, Ben loves the part played by Pope in kicking off the new series.

“I have a great scene with Raquel Cassidy (Nancy, Jonathan’s boss) and it’s fantastic fun. Jonathan somehow misinterprets a situation and believes that Nancy would re-commission Echo Beach if he has sex with her and I just make ridiculous advances and it all descends into a huge fight!

“Nancy definitely comes off best, Jonathan doesn’t even get to land a punch! It’s a great way to start the series.”

Ben was also delighted to meet up again with the rest of the cast, and work alongside new recruits Kelly Brook and Alan Dale.

He says: “It was strange seeing everyone again, it is exactly like being back at the first day of school. Everyone immediately slipped back into the various roles they had before; bully, bullied, teacher!

“The director’s probably the one who gets bullied at first, a bit like a supply teacher with the rest of us misbehaving! Of all the shows I’ve done, it’s probably the one with the absolute best cast feeling. I don’t think that generally has any bearing on how good the show is, the two things just always seem to be completely unconnected. We really do all get on really well, it feels really relaxed and you feel as though you can try different things.

“We had a bit of a get-together with Tony Jordan and some of the writers and with all the cast, and just chatted through the stories from the last series and where our characters were. It was only really very general, but it was nice to be slightly involved in the development of the characters.

“And we have Kelly Brook and Alan Dale in it and the costumes are amazing, it is so much fun.”

No offence to the world of physics, but a great many people will be thankful that Ben Miller instead decided to play the fool for a living.