Mark Gatiss: ‘BBC Two turned down The League of Gentlemen six times’

Mark Gatiss will never do Taskmaster because people assume he is very clever and he’d like to keep it that way. He reveals this to me over lunch in Franco's, London's oldest, and very delicious, Italian restaurant. He is best known for playing the impeccably dressed (and very clever) Mycroft Holmes in the immensely popular BBC adaptation Sherlock, which he co-created and wrote with Steven Moffat, as well as the very clever detective Book in his murder mystery series Bookish, Tycho Nestoris in Game of Thrones and, of course, for a range of roles in The League of Gentlemen.

‘You play very clever and also extremely posh people — many of them very posh Londoners,’ I tell him. ‘But that’s not you at all?’’

‘It happens, doesn’t it?’ he replies with a faded, yet still distinctly northeastern accent, derived from his working-class upbringing in Durham. ‘I remember talking to a BBC executive once and he said: “I’d really like you to write something that is a lot more earthy and working class, because not everyone’s posh like us, Mark,” and I said: “I’m not f***ing posh.”’

The double Olivier award-winner rose to fame playing an array of odd characters — from Les McQueen, a fading 1970s singer unable to let go of his glory days, to Hilary Briss, the rather macabre local butcher — in the BBC show The League of Gentlemen. Premiering in 1999, the surrealist comedy-horror series set in northern England starred Mark and his fellow writers Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson. Mark has also appeared as Frank Renfield in the BBC and Netflix miniseries Dracula and Lord Marlborough, the husband of Rachel Weisz’s character in the dark period comedy The Favourite. Among his other credits are Operation Mincemeat, The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. He is also beloved by many ‘Whovians’ for his work as a writer, and an actor, in Doctor Who.

‘I always wanted to act and write — that obviously didn't mean it was going to happen, but that was certainly my ambition,’ says Mark. I ask him about his latest projects. The first is The Room in the Tower, a chilling Christmas ghost story he has written for the BBC, which will star Joanna Lumley and Tobias Menzies. Another writing project is the return of his adaptation of A Christmas Carol at Alexandra Palace in London this year. His detective series Bookish, in which he stars, has also recently been confirmed for a second season. As if that wasn’t enough, Mark is also preparing to return to the stage next year for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a satire on Hitler’s ascent to power where he will play the titular 1930s Chicago mobster.

‘I‘ve been preparing all my life. I saw it when I was a teenager, and it blew my mind, and I've always wanted to do it,’ he says of the Brechtian work. ‘I've seen many great productions, but it's gone from being a warning from history to being — excuse my French — extremely f***ing urgent to put on. Not that it's going to change the course of history, but I feel like I'm doing something to demonstrate how easily you can slide into authoritarianism, and the pattern is just extraordinary. The playbook is being used again, and it still works,’ he concludes, referring mainly to, as he calls him, ‘Mr Orange Man in America’.

The actor was born in 1966 in Sedgefield, the youngest of three children. His father was a colliery engineer who later changed careers to work as an engineer in the local mental hospital. His mother was a secretary in a paint factory, but she later worked at the hospital too. ‘We grew up opposite it, in a house owned by the hospital,’ Mark recalls. ‘Friends at school used to cycle past it speedily because they were scared. But it is mental illness — it is nothing to be scared of.’ The biggest terror in Mark’s young life was not his proximity to the mental hospital but sharing a room. ‘My brother started smoking and snoring and I don’t think I slept properly for maybe three years. It was a nightly horror,’ he jokes. At one point Mark's cousin ran away from home and came to live with them. ‘There were three of us in that room and we used to rotate on a camp bed. For a long time, we had it rough,’ he says. ‘I’m very glad to have had a grounded upbringing because it makes me appreciate things. My mother told me they were just so frightened of getting into debt.’

When Mark’s career took off he treated his parents to a holiday in Madeira. ‘They didn’t like it,’ he recalls with a laugh. ‘You can’t please your parents — you just can’t. It is not allowed. There is a rule.’

Living so near the hospital as a child led to ‘so many weird little Gothic complications’, such as having to go through the hospital’s telephone operator in order to call someone, which perhaps inspired Mark’s lifelong obsession with horror films and the gothic genre. ‘It used to sort of rule our lives really, as kids, because so much centered around it. We went swimming there, had a haircut there, went to the cinema there. In the early days [of my career] I used to push against the idea of the obvious symbolism, but the older I get the more I realise that I think it did have an effect. Although my brother’s a postman, so I don't know whether there’s any gothic sensibility there.’ Eventually Mark joined his family in working there too, as a gardener for the summer. ‘It made me see the whole place totally differently,’ he says.

Gardening was just one part of a countryside childhood. ‘I had, looking back at it, strangely, quite a rural upbringing,’ Mark says. He attended primary school in the village of Hayington, where his brother still lives today. ‘It was much more country-fied than I realised at the time. Then I went to secondary school in a post-war new town that was much more brutal. The north-east of England is a curious combination of amazing countryside and often quite grim industrial towns that have mining roots. It was an interesting mixture.’

Of his school days, he recalls being semi-academic, ‘very good at some things, hopeless at others.’ He is ‘pretty sure’ now that he has ADHD, but doesn’t feel a need to have it diagnosed. Maths was a write-off, but art history, English and science were his favourites. His enemy was physical education. ‘If there is an opposite to having an interest in sports, that was me. I hated PE with such a fervour that I now find it ironic and quite pleasing that I run and swim, as that used to be the bane of my life.’ The exception was yoga, ‘I did it from an early age and am still quite flexible.’

After his job as a gardener he went interrailing before auditioning for drama schools and landing a place at Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire, where he met Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson — and The League of Gentlemen was born. It took a while for his acting and writing to take off full-time, so he worked in a children’s nursery, and as a film reviewer for a newspaper before permanently making the move to London in 1991. He still adores it here and lives in Islington. He is an adamant north Londoner. ‘Johnathan Miller described south London as very much London’s backstage area,’ he tells me, when I mention that I am a south Londoner.

Acting work came and went for Mark. He was ‘on the dole’ for a spell and didn’t work for around two years before The League took off properly. They won the Perrier Award at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which launched them to stardom. ‘The BBC were very keen,’ he recalls of the original, which was a radio show. ‘It looked like it was absolutely guaranteed, and I've now discovered that the controller of BBC Two turned it down six times. But the same thing happened to Stanley Kubrick. And that’s not a BBC-bashing thing, it happens across the board.’

Sherlock was the phenomenon that Mark didn’t see coming. It starred Martin Freeman as Dr John Watson and launched the careers of Benedict Cumberbatch (who played the eponymous deerstalker-sporting detective) and Andrew Scott (who was cast as his archnemesis: Jim Moriarty). ‘Martin was already a name,’ Mark says, ‘but we watched Benedict become a star. It was like bottled lightning. With Andrew, the best thing was that at least two casting directors afterwards came to me saying: “You bastard. I wanted to discover Andrew Scott”.’ Matt Smith also auditioned for Dr Watson. ‘It was immediately apparent that he was not that kind of character, and about two weeks later he got Doctor Who,’ Mark says.

Bookish is also a detective story, but a post-war one that Mark has had the idea for, for around eight years. ‘I wanted to do my own detective story and that setting after the war really fascinates me — and it's never done.’ It’s a triumph and sees Mark, in full tweed, being his wittiest and best, and also most poignant. The protagonist, Book, like Mark, is a gay man. ‘There's a lot of me in Book, but it's more about exploring that time, and what it meant, and I think, in a non-didactic way, trying to tell people what it used to be like, and how easily it could be like that again, and in certain parts of the world still is.’ He also thinks it important that Book is ‘incidentally gay’. ‘Bookish is a murder mystery series. That's the most important thing. The back story is the lavender marriage. It's not about that — the most important thing is “whodunnit?”’

Your aesthetic hero

Aubrey Beardsley. He was a genius of late-19th century art and died of consumption aged 25. It was quite a life.

An exhibition that has really impressed you

The Bowie exhibition. I missed it at the V&A, then went to Australia and it was on there. I remember passing it and thinking: ‘This is fate’. It was mind blowing.

The last thing of note that you bought yourself

I bought a 16th century painting which we believe is of Edmund Spenser, who wrote The Faerie Queene, but we can't ascertain, because it's painted on copper and is very small. It’s absolutely exquisite.

Your favourite painting

John Singer Sargent's Dr. Pozzi at Home. It’s an amazing picture. He was a controversial French gynaecologist murdered by one of his lovers.

A book you’ve found inspiring

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. I used to live opposite Arsenal stadium in the early 1990s and my friend bought me that for my birthday. I was like, ‘Thanks,’ because I'm not interested in football. He said: ‘Read it, and you’ll understand.’ And I read it, and I went: ‘Of course’. What it's about is passion. So the football is detailed, but what it's about is a man's obsession.

The music you work to

I have to have total silence. It’s never worked for me.

The last podcast you listened to

The Traitors Uncloaked. Apart from that I listen to The Rest is Entertainment.

The possession you’d never sell

My dog, Bob — an eight-year-old adorable Labrador.

The person that would play you in a film of your life

I’d play me. Otherwise I don’t know — who would want to? Some young buck. Some handsome 20-year-old. One of the proudest moments of my life was when Graeme Garden, from The Goodies, was asked that question and he said Mark Gatiss. I thought, something's gone right there. He’s a childhood hero of mine.

What you’d take with you to a desert island

I’ve done this [on Desert Island Discs], I'm afraid. My luxury item was a bath, despite the shady lagoon, which is there in the title music. I would take a big cast iron bath with ball and claw legs and a lifetime supply of hot water.

The thing that gets you up in the morning

Swimming. I can’t run at the moment because I’ve done my knee in so I’ve started going swimming again, three days a week, and I’m obsessed with it. I’m hoping the novelty lasts.

The items you collect

I collect pictures by John Minton, my favourite artist. I have eight of them.

A hotel you could go back and back to

The best hotel I've ever stayed in was in a place called Fukuoka in Japan. It was like being in Dr. No. An extraordinary hotel of concrete and rock, like a Ken Adam set. It was absolutely amazing. It was so sophisticated I couldn't find the light switch, and I spent the whole night with an eye mask on, because I was too embarrassed to ring and ask where it was.

The most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten

It's definitely the spicy tuna in that restaurant in LA, which I can never remember the name of, which Steven Moffat introduced me to.

The best present you’ve received

I bought myself the Jon Pertwee jacket from The Planet of the Daleks, 1973.

Lotte and Mark dined at Franco's in London. For more information or to book a table see their website.

For tickets to A Christmas Carol at Alexander Palace, written by Mark Gatiss, see here.