Simon Pegg

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the actor and writer Simon Pegg. He's described himself as a nerd-do-well, but that's only part of the story. Today he's up there in the credits for two of Hollywood's most successful film franchises, Mission Impossible and Star Trek. Sure, he's an 80s kid from Gloucester who turned his childhood obsessions, zombies, cop shows and sci-fi, into the cult classics Sean of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End, but his talent has taken him much further. Steven Spielberg cast him in Tintin and Ready Player One, and he co-wrote Star Trek Beyond when the team needed a new script just weeks before shooting began. He started out as a stand-up comedian and broke through with the much-loved slacker sitcom Spaced, which he co-created with Jessica Hines and director Edgar Wright. He says, I'd like to never get cynical about my job, to always maintain a certain degree of wonder about it and an appreciation of where I am. Simon Pegg, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Simon Pegg1:40

Thanks, Lauren. Lovely to be here.

Presenter1:42

So where do you find that wonder, the wonder in the work that you do today?

Simon Pegg1:45

I just try and always approach it with my prior self in mind. So whether it's stepping onto the bridge of the Enterprise or being part of some crazy stunt on Mission Impossible, I always try and imagine myself as a kid and try and sort of plug into what my reaction would be, which would be utter amazement.

Presenter2:05

A delight.

Simon Pegg2:06

Yeah.

Presenter2:06

And is it a question of auditioning at all these days, or do things happen in the world? No, no, darling, no.

Simon Pegg2:11

No, no, dotting now.

Presenter2:13

You wouldn't have to go through that process, would you?

Simon Pegg2:14

Go through the process.

Simon Pegg2:15

You have a living showreel that's kind of out there and I think anyone who wants to cast you would kind of know what you do. I think it it's worth also being pretty proactive and chasing people you like. Yeah, I I think sitting around and waiting for it to come to you is probably a mistake.

Presenter2:30

So who or what have you chased?

Simon Pegg2:33

Oh, I can't say'cause none of them have got back to me.

Simon Pegg2:37

No, I have a list of people that I really like and I'd like to work with. I had a moment in my career when I was casting In Glorious Bastards for Tarantino and then I couldn't do it because I'd already committed to Tintin. But then eventually the role went to Michael Fassbender who was brilliant. But I'm always trying to sort of remind Quentin that I'm around just in case.

Presenter2:59

So you talked about that little kid that you like to keep in touch with and almost go, hey, guess what we're doing tomorrow? When when it comes to music, that's always been a passion of yours as well. Does that go as far back to your childhood?

Simon Pegg3:05

You know

Simon Pegg3:11

Oh, a hundred percent, because I grew up in a music shop, you know, when I was very small, to the age of five. I I lived in a music shop and my dad was a musician and and so it was always playing around the house.

Presenter3:23

All right, well let's dive in. Disc number one. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Simon Pegg3:25

Yeah.

Simon Pegg3:27

It's A Day in the Life by The Beatles. Sergeant Pepper was an album which I remember being around when I was very small and I still have my dad's copy of it which I scrawled my name onto, onto the gatefold across the four of them is Simon Beckingham, which was the name I was born with, in Hard Byrow.

Simon Pegg3:45

Completely defaced this piece of art. It's kind of several songs in one, which I feel like it's a bit of a twofer taking it onto the island. It's like an extra one. And I think if you put Lennon and McCartney in like a centrifuge and span it, you'd get this song because you have like Lennon's contemplative, slightly obnoxiously surreal kind of lyrics and tune. And then you get McCartney's kind of, you know, wry positivity. And it's such a beautiful representation of those two.

Speaker 13:45

Face

Speaker 34:14

I saw a fulfillment today, oh boy.

Speaker 34:20

The English Army had just won the war.

Speaker 34:26

A crowd of people turned away

Speaker 34:32

But I just had to look

Speaker 34:35

Adding red the ball

Speaker 34:40

I'd love to look at

Presenter4:47

A Day in the Life The Beatles. Simon Pegg, you were born in Gloucester in nineteen seventy, as you mentioned, into a creative family. Your father, John, ran a music shop and he was in a band, too. Were they any good?

Simon Pegg4:59

They were good. They were called Pendulum, not to be confused with the Aussie post-punk rockers. And they were an opportunity knocks. Ooh, big time.

Presenter5:06

Ooh, big time.

Simon Pegg5:07

They won on the clapometer, but lost the public vote to the great Palmez.

Presenter5:12

Ugh.

Simon Pegg5:12

Which has always been

Presenter5:13

So near and yet so far.

Simon Pegg5:14

Yeah, but I'm glad it was Pam because she went on to great things and it it wasn't just some cheesy ventriloquist who disappeared into obscurity. And that was a huge deal that night when dad was on Opportunity Notice that oh yeah. I was five. I remember falling over and a cocktail stick stuck in my hand.

Presenter5:16

Because she

Presenter5:25

Do you remember it?

Presenter5:30

So I'm picturing the living room like there must have been snacks because cocktail sticks so they've been food.

Simon Pegg5:35

It's exactly what you could see.

Simon Pegg5:38

'Cause it was it meant something then, more, I think, to be on T V.

Presenter5:43

And what was the music like?

Simon Pegg5:44

They were a show band, so they played That's the Way. Aha, aha, I like it.

Presenter5:49

R

Simon Pegg5:49

They're a tight outfit, you know, all sort of like amateur musicians. But my dad's still in bands today. He's sort of a jazz blues guy now.

Presenter5:57

Oh, fantastic. So he ran a music shop as well as being in Pendulum.

Simon Pegg5:59

But well it

Simon Pegg6:00

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter6:01

So did you spend a lot of time there right through the the racks?

Simon Pegg6:02

I did.

Simon Pegg6:04

Yeah, and it was literally beneath our our flat, so I would sneak down, I would dance either side of the kitchen door. Like my mum would be in the kitchen and I'd be sort of like doing this little dance, and then I would just disappear down the stairs, and my dad would be Jill, he's down here again

Simon Pegg6:20

But um yeah, I taught myself to play the drums in the basement.

Presenter6:20

But so

Presenter6:23

So what was your relationship with your dad like?

Simon Pegg6:26

It was good. It was you know, he and my mother divorced when I was six and then I started to sort of see him every week or every couple of weeks after that. And so we we spent a lot of our time just driving around together. We'd drive around to my grandma's and a lot of that time we'd spend uh listening to music. He'd introduce me to stuff. I I so remember him saying, Listen to this song, it's like a story and he played me Hotel California. But yeah, we we got on really well and we still do.

Presenter6:52

Tell me a bit about your mum then. Jill, she worked in personnel, but she was creative, very talented too, and her outlet for that was amateur dramatics.

Simon Pegg7:00

Yeah, my mum is entirely the reason I've wound up doing what I do. She was interested in drama before I was born. I think she was kind of working on the stage production of Oliver in Gloucester the year I was born, I think.

Presenter7:11

And do you do you remember seeing your mom perform? Do you remember seeing your mom perform?

Simon Pegg7:15

Oh god, yeah. She played Bonnie Jean in Brigadoon. She's a really good actress, my mum. She won loads of awards. But I remember standing up in the upper seats, just shouting, That's my mom, that's my mum.

Simon Pegg7:25

Like hitting people next to me and them being really, really pleased for me that I was so proud. And I was, you know, she was amazing.

Simon Pegg7:32

And then as I grew up, I would go to the local theatre with her, the Olympus Theatre in Gloucester, and hang out. And I would sometimes be in the big sort of production they do every year. They do a big musical at the Gloucester Leisure Centre every year. And I was in Carousel and Music Man. And the whole thing was like a social club. They were all friends. They all did it for fun. And just to be around that was really exciting.

Presenter7:55

Let's hear your second disc, Simon. What have you chosen?

Simon Pegg7:58

This is Rosalinda's Eyes by Billy Joel, which is off the album Fifty Second Street. And that is an album that my dad and I would listen to a lot in the car. It's a really great album. But this song, I just love it. It's just a beautiful, beautiful song and it really reminds me of those days just driving to and from my grandma's with my dad.

Speaker 38:16

Raised a Latin dancing solo down in Haroldsware

Speaker 38:22

Oh Havana, I've been searching for you everywhere.

Speaker 38:28

Though I'll never be there.

Speaker 38:31

I know what I would see there. I could always find my Cuban skies and Roseland design.

Presenter8:46

Rosalinda's Eyes, Billy Joel.

Presenter8:49

Simon, as you've said your parents separated when you were about six. What do you remember about your mum breaking the news to you?

Simon Pegg8:55

We were at my nan's. We were living with my nan and I woke up one morning and I went in and I said, Hey, where's Dad? And she sort of explained it as best she could. And then normal service kind of resumed when he started to come to pick me up and then, you know, they both remarried and life went on, you know.

Presenter9:10

Do you remember how you felt about it?

Simon Pegg9:12

I remember making the decision to take my stepfather's name. This is the absolute rationale I took. I don't want to go to school and for my headmaster to say, hello, Mrs. Beckingham, and for her to have to say, no, it's Mrs. Pegg. And so I decided, because she said, do you want to be Pegg or do you want to be Beckingham? And I just wanted to be the same as my mom. And that's how I became Simon Pegg. People, I think, sometimes think it's like a stage name. No, I wouldn't choose that name.

Speaker 19:28

And when I just

Speaker 19:37

That

Simon Pegg9:39

Uh, but it's something that I I made a decision about when I was young, you know. And then uh yeah, and I went through the invariable sort of tensions of s step parents, you know, it's a delicate path to tread for both the adult and the child.

Speaker 39:43

No.

Presenter9:53

You and your stepdad, it it took a while for that relationship to cohere and there were tensions. What w what was going on?

Simon Pegg9:58

Uh

Simon Pegg10:00

I think he was a young guy. You know, mum was only 30, I think, and he was a little younger than her. He wasn't particularly mature, you know, and suddenly you have a.

Simon Pegg10:08

I'm being nice here. You know, you have a relationship where there is a physical representation of a previous relationship. I'm also vying for her attention. He was jealous, you know. I just remember feeling insecure, you know. And that probably led to me wanting attention and validation from external sources. When I was 10, I went to see him. He was working in Debenhams at that time. The fair was in town, and Raiders of the Lost Ark had just come out of the cinema. And I went up and he said to me, We can do two things tonight. You can either go to the fair or you can go and see Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now, I really wanted to please him. And so I said, I thought he really wants to go to the cinema. He doesn't want to go to the fair. Now, I could have done either. I wanted to see Raiders because I heard it was from the producers of Jaws and Star Wars. But as much, I wanted to go to the fair and ride on the big wheel. So I said, let's go to the cinema. Of course, life-changing movie moment. And then years and years later, you know, he left when I was about 14. His relationship with my mum dissolved and then he moved on. I went to visit Spielberg on the set of Tintin to, you know, sort of talk about playing the Thompson Twins and stuff. And it was the first time I ever met Stephen, and it was incredibly nerve-wracking. I drove down to Santa Monica and I went in and there he was in his baseball cap and smoking a cigar, looking like Steven Spielberg. And we talked a little bit. And then he said, okay, I've got to go off and edit Indiana Jones 4 now. And I was like, okay, bye. Bye, Stephen. And I went out and I sat on the hood of my car and I rang Richard. The first person I rang was Richard to say, guess who I just met? And guess who wants to work with me? You know, we're friends now. And he's my sister's dad.

Speaker 311:30

Bye, Stephen.

Simon Pegg11:45

All that tumultuous time, you know, is in the past, but however many years later I was still.

Simon Pegg11:51

Looking for his kind of approval.

Presenter11:54

Simon, let's take a minute for some music. This is your third choice today.

Simon Pegg11:58

Well, this is... I had to put a piece of John Williams' music in here. His scores were the kind of fuel for my imagination when I was a kid. I'd put my headphones on in my grandma's front living room and I would imagine myself in the universes that he was scoring in Star Wars and Raiders and close encounters. But this piece, particularly, The Asteroid Field, which scores the moment when the Millennium Falcon flies, is trying to evade all those TIE Fighters, it's just the most brilliant piece of cinema and music. When I was a kid, I would imagine myself in Star Wars. And so when I eventually got to be in Star Wars in The Force Awakens and was at the premiere and saw my name and then saw John Williams' name, wish fulfillment doesn't even cover it.

Presenter13:09

The Asteroid Field, from the soundtrack to The Empire Strikes Back, composed and conducted by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. So I'm picturing you as a kid then, Simon. I want to know a bit more about that little boy. These big stories that you became obsessed with. They were an escape for you, were they?

Simon Pegg13:27

Yeah, I really, really lost myself in all that stuff when I was a kid and music and film were just my kind of little roots out of normality and I really, really I just loved it. And I also felt like Gloucester was a bit like Tatooine, you know, like Luke Skywalker says in Star Wars, if there's a bright center to the universe, then Gloucester's the place that it's furthest from. Or it felt like that when I was a kid.

Speaker 113:36

I really

Presenter13:48

And what about that performer, Gene? I wonder when that kicked in in you? Were you the kind of kid who would mess about and try and make people laugh?

Simon Pegg13:55

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I wrote my first comedy piece as a newsreader about this gas that had been released from somewhere and was making people pass out. And it was a news story. My newsreader was called Dickie Bird, which I thought was hilarious. I didn't know there was a cricket commentator by the same name. And the morning I performed it for the school, I'd fallen over really badly in the playground and smashed my face, like really just grazed all my face. And I remember saying, Hello, this is Dickie Bird, who's recently been in a fight with a cat. And that was, I think, my first improvised joke.

Presenter14:25

Do you remember getting a laugh then when it did you? Yeah.

Simon Pegg14:27

And it was like some sort of massive endorphin rush. Funnily enough, when I was seven, I had a day trip to London and we came and we went to see a play and we went to Madame Two Swords and the Natural History Museum. And the other thing we did was we drove to Wood Lane and we parked and just looked at the old TV Center. And I remember phoning my mum when I was on the stand-up show, which is one of the very first TV, my first TV appearances in 95, from my dressing room at TV Centre and saying, I'm in.

Presenter14:58

So tell me about taking your first steps into acting, your first serious steps. You were sixteen, you went to South Warwickshire College of Further Education in Stratford, and it was there that you were able to take A levels in English literature and theatre. What did you get out of studying there? I know it was a time of great change for you.

Simon Pegg15:15

It was. I was away from home. I met this whole bunch of kids that were the same as me. They all kind of had the same interests and I just had the most incredible time. It was a really, really fertile, inspiring time. And these people that I met were the most significant friends I ever made.

Presenter15:34

And what kind of parts did you get to play?

Simon Pegg15:37

I was just a woodcutter in Bloodwedding. You know, I just had one scene. And I wasn't allowed to play Hamlet when we did Hamlet because I'd gone a little bit off the rails because I'd got very much I'd become a bit of a goth. I discovered various things you discover at the age of 16. And my teacher at the time, Gordon Vallins, who was the head of the course, said, You're not going to play Hamlet, you're going to play the ghost of Hamlet. And so my friend Dale played Hamlet very well. But I did get singled out in the Stratford Herald as the best performance of

Simon Pegg16:07

Even though I only came on and said, kill your uncle. And Gordon was a

Simon Pegg16:12

Is a beautiful man. He was so caring and he did the right thing. You know, he noticed that I was just drifting away into.

Simon Pegg16:19

Potentially not getting into university, and so he put me back on track, and it worked.

Presenter16:24

Time for disc number four, Simon. What have you got?

Simon Pegg16:27

The Smiths and accept yourself. And I used to listen to it walking up and down the Ulster Road, heading up to my then-girlfriend Mandy's house on my Walkman. It's got that weird sort of Motown beat, but then there's all that sort of jangly ma brilliance in it and Morrissey complaining. I mean, who could ask for more?

Speaker 316:48

Every day you must say, So how do I feel about my life?

Speaker 316:56

Anything is hard to find When you will not open your eyes When will you accept yourself?

Speaker 317:11

I am sick and I am dull and I am playing

Speaker 317:16

Oh dearly, I'd love to get carried away.

Presenter17:20

The Smiths and Accept Yourself.

Presenter17:24

So Simon Pegg, college was a really happy time for you, but let's talk about what happened after you finished your A levels because you went back home and had to adjust to life back in Gloucestershire, very much as you put it, not the centre of the universe. How did it go?

Simon Pegg17:39

That was a tough summer for me. And I look back now and I realize that I was suffering from a form of abandonment just because my friends at Stratford meant so much to me that I kind of suffered a weird bereavement, I think. And that manifested itself as a bat of teenage depression, which I couldn't understand.

Presenter17:58

So you didn't know what was happening.

Simon Pegg17:59

No, I just knew that I didn't feel right, you know, and my heart was racing and

Simon Pegg18:04

I felt really gloomy when I woke up, you know, all that kind of stuff. And it eventually it it dissipated when I got to Bristol University and I met a whole new bunch of great friends. But I didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand what was happening to me emotionally, you know, so it was just very frightening, which is always the case with depression because it just feels like normality.

Presenter18:17

So it was just very frightening.

Presenter18:23

Mm-hmm.

Simon Pegg18:23

When you're in it.

Presenter18:24

So you got a place at Bristol University to study theatre, film and television, and that was when you started performing stand-up. Tell me about that. Were you a natural? What was your act? How did it happen?

Simon Pegg18:34

I take my goldfish on stage with me, whose name was Rover, and he was a Marxist poet. And I would read my goldfish's poems out, and so they were all.

Presenter18:42

So they were at a distance, at a remove. He was responsible for the material. That was the concern.

Simon Pegg18:45

Yes

Simon Pegg18:47

Yeah, so I was his muse. I was reading out fish-related political poetry in the vein of, you know, in the Marxist vein. And being at Bristol University and learning about the business and becoming a bit politicized and not wanting to just be an actor for hire, I kind of wanted to do my own thing. And Stand Up is a perfect way to generate your own work and maintain your own sort of integrity, albeit fish-related. It's just very lonely.

Simon Pegg19:15

You know, I I went on tour with like Sean Locke and Boothby Graffo and and Simon Munnery around all the universities in the UK. And you'd do these gigs and then you'd wind up just sitting on a in a, you know, bed and breakfast eating a Snickers by yourself.

Presenter19:27

Simon, it's time to go with the music. Your fifth choice today then. What's it gonna be?

Simon Pegg19:31

The Sisters of Mercy, who became a major band for me as a young goth. I loved them. And I remember when I met my second girlfriend, Caroline, we watched a live video of the Sisters of Mercy at the Albert Hall called Wake. She used to wear patchouli oil. That was her kind of aroma. She was incredible. She had this hair extensions, black hair extensions. She was so glamorous. She was like a gothic princess. And I courted her for like a year. I just went for it, like made her laugh all the time. Eventually, we had this evening. We sort of cuddled up on the sofa together, watched that video. Nothing happened. I went back to Gloucester the next day and I just smelt of her. And I put this song on, Marianne, which is a brilliantly Baroque, hilarious dirge.

Simon Pegg20:16

And just bathed in her cloud of aroma and just felt so heart sick. It was a great feeling, though, I loved it. Such a drama queen.

Speaker 320:27

Uh

Simon Pegg20:27

Uh

Speaker 320:29

See you in town.

Speaker 320:32

In this cruel place your voice above the mayor's throne In the wake of the ship with cruise and falling pillow down

Speaker 320:46

If you can see me, Larry I reach out and take me for you.

Presenter20:54

Maria and the Sisters of Mercy.

Presenter20:58

So Simon Pegg, you started getting television roles and then in nineteen ninety nine you co wrote the Channel Four series Spaced with Jessica Hines. It was about the lives of two twenty something flatmates and their oddball associates and became cult viewing. Did you have any idea that it was going to take off the way that it did?

Simon Pegg21:15

No, we didn't. We just knew that nobody was making television for us. It felt like all the shows about Twenty Somethings, friends included, had no relation to our life. Our life was far more sedentary and childish and just dossing around, you know, playing video games and stuff.

Presenter21:34

So you, Edgar Wright, and your friend the actor Nick Frost went on to make what would become known, to give it its full title, as The Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy. That's a series of comedy films, Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End. And they were very popular. Did you ever consider making a fourth instalment?

Simon Pegg21:53

The difficult thing is that people just want more of the same. I get asked all the time, oh, we need a shawled too, oh, we need a hot fuzz too, oh, we need more. No, you don't need it at all. You just want comfort, you want familiarity. What you really need is to be challenged, you need something new, because that's where interesting things start happening. So, we have that dilemma of do we give people what they want or do we give them something they don't know they want. And I think it has to be the latter. We can't just do the same thing again. We have to be surprising at the risk of being disappointing.

Presenter22:23

After the success of the Cornetto trilogy, you came to the attention of director JJ Abrams, who had you in mind for a role in Mission Impossible Three. It's quite a jump from Crouch End, that.

Speaker 322:35

Bye.

Presenter22:36

Were you ready for the Blockbuster franchise?

Simon Pegg22:39

It was such a weird thing. Edgar and I were, I think, we were writing Hot Fuzz and we were at Big Talk in Great Titchfield Street in London and

Presenter22:46

It's a production company.

Simon Pegg22:46

Yeah, and the call came down from the office. Oh, the J.J. Abrams is on the phone for Simon, and he told me about the film and

Presenter22:46

Uh

Simon Pegg22:54

And I was kind of like, yeah, I guess. I didn't know what else to say. So it was, yeah, an incredible moment.

Presenter23:01

How did you get on with your co star Tom Cruise?

Simon Pegg23:03

Great, you know. I mean, it it's always been a very easy relationship. You you I think you realize when you meet the person rather than the thicket of mythology that's built up around them, you know, it's a di it's a different experience.

Presenter23:15

There is so much speculation, you know, about his private lives and his beliefs. Did that ever make things tricky in developing a friendship?

Simon Pegg23:23

No, I mean, I don't ask him about stuff like that because I feel that would be that would be me abusing my privileged access that I get to him. You know what I mean? My relationship with him is very, very

Simon Pegg23:34

It's just very simple and amiable with friends.

Presenter23:37

That level of fame, stardom, celebrity, that's an incredibly intense thing to witness up close. I wonder about your view on that because that's interesting.

Simon Pegg23:40

Celebrity that

Simon Pegg23:43

Yeah, and I think it's

Simon Pegg23:46

I mean, he loves it and he really relishes it. It's all he knows. It energizes him and it spurs him on. I don't think I would.

Simon Pegg23:53

appreciate that particularly. You know, I'd find that very stressful and overwhelming and it would make me want to sort of retreat. I'm happy with where I am. We joke about it all. I mean, I always make fun of him for it, you know, about the things that he can access. And like we were filming in South Africa recently. We were filming on this mountain in the morning and then he decided he wanted to go and swim with sharks. And so he took us in, he flew us in a helicopter to this seaside part of South Africa. And we had this kind of bespoke trip out and dived with sharks and stuff like that. And at the end of the day, we're driving back and going, that was a real Tom Cruise kind of day, wasn't it?

Simon Pegg24:31

You know, it was just a bit of a Tom Cruise day. And, you know, he kind of appreciates the ridiculousness of it sometimes.

Presenter24:39

Time for some more music. Your sixth choice today. What is it?

Simon Pegg24:42

Well, this goes back to 1984 when I was a young break dancer. Rap and hip-hop and dance were kind of merging into the mainstream a little bit, and little village kids like me were body popping. And this song hit the charts, Chuck Akhans I Feel For You, or rather Prince's I Feel For You, which she covered. It was everything that I loved. It has that fantastic rap at the start. The dancers from Breakdance, the movie, were in the video. It's a banger. If I'm DJing at a party, I never knocked up this song.

Speaker 325:30

With your baby

Speaker 325:41

Yeah.

Presenter25:45

I feel for you. Chucker Khan. Simon Pegg, you started working on Mission Impossible Three in two thousand six, and everything was going very well for you professionally. But around this time the depression that you'd experienced as a young man came back. What happened?

Simon Pegg26:00

On the set of mission, you know, I was there in the heart of where I'd always dreamed of being. You know, I was on the Paramount lot. I was working with Tom and Ving Reims, and I was in this huge blockbuster film, and yet I was kind of in this terrible, panicky, distressed state. I couldn't figure out why. I was like, what is this? And of course, it was because I was depressed, and I needed to address that and stop trying to take care of it myself inadvisable ways. That was drinking, which is drinking, yeah, which obviously when you're depressed, you just want to change how you feel.

Presenter26:24

That was drinking.

Presenter26:29

Boom.

Simon Pegg26:29

And that lasted for up until about 2010.

Presenter26:33

Were people close to you worried about you?

Simon Pegg26:35

Yeah, everybody was, you know.

Simon Pegg26:37

The thing is that you become very sneaky when you have something like that in your life. You learn how to kind of do it without anyone noticing because it takes over and it wants to sustain itself and it will do everything it can to not be stopped, you know. But eventually it just gets to a point when it can't be hidden. And that's when, you know, thankfully, I was able to pull out of the dive. A lot of people don't have that moment, you know, and if it's.

Presenter27:02

What was it for you? What was your moment?

Simon Pegg27:05

I was in Comic Con publicising Paul.

Simon Pegg27:08

And

Presenter27:09

That was your film with Nick Frost about the in brilliant alien film.

Simon Pegg27:10

With Nick Frost, yeah.

Simon Pegg27:12

Yeah, it was a fun film. And I'd had to. I had Tilly had been born, you know, like the most incredible thing in my life had happened. And I still was like, what's wrong with me? Why?

Simon Pegg27:21

Why aren't I jumping for joy every day, you know? And

Simon Pegg27:25

And I think it was all those things of like, this needs some serious evaluation. And so I managed to get help and stop drinking and address why I was drinking and

Simon Pegg27:37

And that was the turning point.

Presenter27:39

I think we'd better make some room for the music. Your seventh choice to do.

Simon Pegg27:40

Yeah

Presenter27:42

Tell us about this one.

Simon Pegg27:43

1999 or 2000, I met Chris Martin for the first time when Coldplay were just a sort of shoegazing indie band. I think Parachutes was, they were touring parachutes at the time. And my wife was a music publicist, and we were at this gig at the Millennium Dome, as it was named then. And we met afterwards and we started this friendship. And so Chris would come to the pub, and we'd always go back to the house every night. And he used to sit in the kitchen with the guitar. He'd always get the guitar. And he'd play me this song. It's called Iblumblaum, which is Icelandic for the blue people. And it's just this little acoustic song. And it was something he was noodling with at the time. And

Simon Pegg28:21

I'd always asked him to play it'cause I really, really loved it. And I I said, L you have to put this on something, you know, y this is such a beautiful song. You have to put it on a record and it ended up being a B side to clocks. But this song, it just reminds me of the early days of our friendship.

Speaker 328:39

All in old time

Speaker 328:51

Go with me all the time.

Speaker 329:03

Uh

Presenter29:04

And in the A date of love.

Presenter29:09

Coldplay and E Bloom Blaum.

Presenter29:12

Simon Pegg, you recently said I'm 52 and I want to keep working until I drop. So you still have that drive. It's still present within you.

Simon Pegg29:17

No.

Simon Pegg29:20

Yeah.

Presenter29:21

Where does that come from, do you think? It's it's always been there by the sound of it.

Simon Pegg29:21

Why is that?

Simon Pegg29:25

I'm really happy when I'm working. Sometimes it's difficult because it takes you away from home.

Simon Pegg29:29

And I do miss my family when I'm away, and that's something I've had to kind of learn how to cope with.

Presenter29:35

How do you cope with them?

Simon Pegg29:36

FaceTime

Simon Pegg29:37

And also the knowledge that I'm going to go home at some point. I used to have a sort of weird kind of gloomy, oh, I'm never going to see them again feeling when I was younger and less in control of my emotions.

Presenter29:40

Boop.

Simon Pegg29:49

But now

Presenter29:49

So there was a bit of abandonment there maybe.

Simon Pegg29:51

Yeah, I think so. It all goes back to it's quite simple, kind of like I'm like Psychology 101.

Presenter29:58

When are you happiest?

Simon Pegg29:59

I think when I'm at home, sat in the the snug with the family, we're all on different devices.

Simon Pegg30:05

The dogs are asleep. That's what I'm happiest.

Presenter30:05

The dogs are as

Presenter30:08

Well, of course it's all about to change'cause I'm going to cast you away to your desert islands. Do you think you'll be able to make a new life for yourself out there?

Simon Pegg30:12

Yeah.

Simon Pegg30:16

I mean, I'm I love the film Castaway and uh I definitely try and go through the Tom Hanks playbook, try and get a volleyball with a a bloody face on it, and uh I'll do my best. If I can have the things that you you say I can have, then maybe I'll make it.

Presenter30:30

Well, we've got one more tractor here before we find out your final disc to do, Simon Pegg. What's it going to be?

Simon Pegg30:35

Boy Genius are a band which I really love. It's a three piece a supergroup, if you will, of female singer songwriters, Julian Baker, Lucy Dacas and Phoebe Bridges. It's a spine tingler, this one. It's heavy, the guitar's heavy and their vocals are just so on point. It's the song on that EP I tend to put on repeat.

Speaker 330:53

You put salt in the wood

Speaker 330:59

And a kiss on my cheek

Speaker 331:05

You bother me up.

Speaker 331:10

And you sit down to eat.

Speaker 331:16

A din injury.

Presenter31:22

Boy genius and salt in the wound. So, Simon Pegg, I'm going to send you away to the island. I will give you some items to take with you. You can have the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of your choice. What would you like?

Simon Pegg31:34

I will take The Wasp Factory by Ian Banks. It's just.

Simon Pegg31:39

A brilliant dark

Simon Pegg31:41

Sick metaphor about Thatcher's Britain, and I've read it so many times. It's just a really, really I love Ian Banks anyway, he's a great writer, but this one is special to me.

Presenter31:51

You can also have a luxury item. What are you going to go for?

Simon Pegg31:54

That will be my bean to cup coffee maker, which I'll solar power.

Simon Pegg31:59

Or use some kind of wind energy. I do look forward to a coffee in the morning to the point where I feel a little excitement before I go to bed.

Presenter32:09

Almost time.

Simon Pegg32:10

Yeah, I really do. I like

Presenter32:11

Like a child on Christmas Eve. Yeah.

Simon Pegg32:12

Yeah, I know I'm gonna the first thing I do is I'm gonna

Simon Pegg32:15

Measure out the beans into the dosing cup and put them in the hopper and then fill the the port thingy and then stick it. I love it. I love making my coffee. I open up the house, feed the dogs, and I sit on the sofa. I have 15 minutes before Tilly wakes up and I have to start making breakfast and Mo comes down. I sit with the dogs, I drink my coffee. Obviously, they won't be there on the island.

Presenter32:35

You can't have the dog, but I couldn't deprive you of that moment.

Simon Pegg32:37

They'll swing to me. They'll swim to me.

Presenter32:39

There might be dolphins.

Simon Pegg32:40

Yeah.

Presenter32:40

Who knows the dogs of the sea?

Presenter32:43

And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today will you save from the waves if you need to?

Simon Pegg32:49

That's such a tough one, and I've kind of agonized over this. And I real I didn't even have I hadn't even made a decision when we started today. I think it will probably have to be a day in the life, just because it's the Beatles, and the Beatles are the source. But like I say, that's with a gun to my head.

Presenter33:08

Sorry, Penna.

Simon Pegg33:09

You can put it away now.

Presenter33:12

Simon Pegg, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Simon Pegg33:15

Thanks, Laura.

Presenter33:38

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Simon, and I can really picture him looking out to sea, enjoying his morning coffee ritual. We've cast away many actors, including Kathleen Turner, Stephen Graham, and Tom Hanks. Simon's childhood hero, director Steven Spielberg, is in our back catalogue too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Jackie Marjoram, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the microbiologist, Professor Sharon Peacock. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 134:40

Hi, I'm Rylan, and I'm here to talk about men. Because in recent years, we have all seen the man in Britain undergo radical change as the rule book has been well and truly ripped apart. So, I'm going to talk to a range of prominent figures and celebs who have each got their own diverse and contrasting takes on what it means to be a man today. I want to prize open the fault lines of modern masculinity and get to grips with the changing landscape and try to get some answers so that we can pass them on to the next generation. This is Rylan, How to Be a Man from BBC Radio 4.

Speaker 135:15

Listen on BPC Sounds.