Larry and George Lamb became closer as adults
He reveals his life was more about pursuing acting roles when son George was younger
My earliest childhood memory is of my mother and father having a fight at the top of the stairs in my grandfather’s house. That’s where they had been living after they got married, and they were having a ruck so Mum was crying.
Being the eldest child, you are lumbered with additional responsibility. Perhaps you know a bit more about what’s going on and you feel a bit more guilt. It was a very disturbing experience.
George and I have got much closer as adults. My life was always about pursuing acting, so although we were close when he was young, the circumstances were that we didn’t go on holidays. Now
we see each other all the time. George is a strong character. You get on or you don’t get on with George. And we get on.
There have been two days that changed my life. One was in 1969 when I met an American woman who was working on a US Air Force base in Germany. I had romantic designs on her, but didn’t realise she was deeply involved with someone else. After I pursued her doggedly, she said to me: “You should be an actor.” She took me along to an amateur theatre on the base and introduced me to the world of acting. The other was some time in 1982 when my son [TV presenter] George’s mum and I were comfortably living apart, around the corner from each other raising the kids between us. George was a boisterous toddler and we were just pulling into London’s Richmond Park as he started going off in the back seat. I swung him round, but she stopped me dead. She said: “If you want the same relationship with that boy as you had with your father, you just carry on – only I don’t think you do.” She could not have said it in a better way. From that moment on, I only ever dealt with him as an equal.
The thing that winds me up about daily life is inconsiderate people. Pushy drivers who don’t understand that there’s a code of civility, and you extend to others the courtesy of letting them pull out before you. That’s one of the things that really gets under my skin.
In terms of TV, the fact that I managed to pull off Gavin & Stacey and EastEnders simultaneously has probably been my greatest achievement. Playing those two contrasting characters made each one more pleasurable. I couldn’t sit around worrying that Mick [in Gavin & Stacey] was too nice because the next minute I was back playing Walford’s Mr Nasty [Archie Mitchell]. I keep in touch with my two EastEnders daughters [Samantha Womack and Rita Simons, who played Ronnie and Roxy] and Barbara Windsor [Peggy].
I binge on box sets. I watched [Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin’s Netflix comedy] Grace And Frankie and I cried at some of the scenes in that. It’s so poignant if you’re of their age. Mind you, I’ll cry at a supermarket opening!
For my 70th birthday this year, my kids and their mums wrote 70 things they love about me and had them framed. While I wept through most of it as I read it, there were also huge outbursts of laughter. They were just little personal things from family life over the years. It was without doubt the most wonderful birthday I’ve ever had.
The two living famous people I would invite to dinner would be Barack Obama and Donald Trump. I’d ask Obama about coming into a job with huge ambition and then gradually realising that you possibly weren’t going to be able to achieve all you wanted to. My first question to Trump would be: “Are you happy in your job, Mr President?”
Larry & George Lamb Turkey A To B Saturday 8pm Travel Channel (Freeview 142, Sky 249, Virgin 292, Freesat 150)
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