I’ve become close with Masoud Esmaeilpour and consider him a friend. We send each other messages from time to time on Instagram, checking in to see how the other is doing. Whenever I see him, he’s always a gentleman, giving me tips about my next opponent. There is a tremendous amount of respect in our friendship.
There are different types of double act: the classic dumb-and-dumber, like Morecambe and Wise; the good cop/bad cop, where one’s a bit spiky and the other’s daft. Sue Perkins and I take what we might call the Ant and Dec approach: the double act came out of our friendship.
People are used to seeing me with Sue but for Sue and me, the most important thing is always going to be our friendship. We were mates at university – very close mates – long before we did any telly. The work is like a nice little cherry on the cake.
One of my best friendships dwindled in the pub business – we still talk, but it challenged that friendship too much – and that taught me to go into football and find people that I can have good relations with but without being overly friendly.
My experience of what a loving relationship is like rings true with a lot of people I meet. I have a theory that the people you meet, one way you choose them, is their suitability for you in that particular matter. Attitudes toward friendship and marriage are in many cases closely aligned.
Somehow I got a hold of an address for Vonnegut shortly after making the Marx Brothers film. Vonnegut wrote back, saying that he had seen the Marx brothers film and loved it. That became the foundation of our friendship: old movies and comedies.
Bob Rock taught me a lot. His friendship has taught me a lot about what you should expect from a recording session and, more importantly, how you shouldn’t expect anything less than absolute joyousness. You should feel great. You should feel 14 to be doing it. It’s true and it’s rare.
We think the friendship between us is a very important aspect for our group, and we try to keep that in a very naturally, like without love, we don’t have to try too hard, but it’s always needs to be there. So, we remind each other all the time that, when you’re going through a hard time, we have the hard time with you.
I’ll tell you what a friendship is to me. Friendship to me is, if my friends need my little finger to live, I’m going to have it cut off. I’m going to the hospital, they cut off my finger, and maybe I have a gold finger instead, and I become famous. But I still give it to my friend.
