John Thomson: 'I've had a lot of fun in my life, but I've reinvented myself for the better'
John Thomson is an English comedian and actor, best known for his roles in Knowing Me Knowing You, The Fast Show, Men Behaving Badly and Cold Feet. So, John, what would your childhood self make of your life today?
I was very bright as a schoolboy and I could read beyond my years. The teachers said I could do anything I wanted, but the truth was that I wasn't really bothered about being put up with the super-clever kids. I wasn't a bad boy – I wasn't into vandalism or starting fires – but I was a class clown, and I relished the attention and the laughter. I always knew I wanted to entertain people, and my younger self would be satisfied to know that that's how I've spent my career.
My childhood was quite rural and my mum and dad [Marita, a former bookshop worker who now makes greetings cards, and Andrew, a hospice and charity worker] were very good to me.
I knew I was adopted from as soon as I was old enough to understand, but I never thought it would have any impact on my life, and it hasn't. As an adoptee, you'll find that you become more curious later in life about your birth parents, but I've always been very proud of the way Mum and Dad told me about it. They said I was chosen from a group of babies and that made me feel very special. It was a good way of broaching it.
I'm very blessed and very grateful to do a job I love, but I didn't foresee what came with celebrity. When Cold Feet took off, there was all sorts of intrusion. My phone was hacked and I was being watched by private investigators. You're in a horrible downward spiral: you wonder whether you're paranoid, whether you're saying too much.
My childhood self would have been disappointed with it all, because the crux of it was that he wanted to do comedy and acting so that he could entertain, not because he wanted to be a famous person.
Celebrity these days isn't about being celebrated for your skills – it's infamy. My coping mechanism was to self-medicate with alcohol, and one of the problems with moving to London, having grown up in south Lancashire and studied in Manchester, was that drugs were par for the course.
Those were tough years and I'll be 12 years sober this Christmas. When I was a kid, drinking was a rite of passage, and because my voice broke early it was me who ordered the drinks at the pub when we were teenagers. It was all fine and you don't see anything else coming.
Since I've stopped drinking, I haven't been ill, either – I had a kidney stone, but that's it. I wanted to stop for me, but I had my kids [Olivia, 15, and Sophia, eight, with Samantha Sharp, to whom Thomson was married between 2005 and 2015] in mind, too. Nothing prepares you for newborns, which are just crying, crapping, eating machines, but then they develop and you see traits beginning to emerge. I'm still fascinated and baffled by that.
When I was a kid my mum and dad were very good at taking us to stately homes and places of historical interest, but there was no Alton Towers or Thorpe Park or any of those places. I had a Disney book, but flying out to Disneyland in California was unattainable, a thing of absolute fantasy.
I've been able to take my kids to Disneyland Paris, but thanks to my parents I've also tried to take them to places that give them an interest in history. I don't want to just throw them in front of a screen because that affects their social skills. I don't want a quiet life with them on the iPad.
Don't get me wrong: I'm glad I've lived an interesting life, and I've had a lot of fun doing it. But I have a lovely degree of anonymity now and I've reinvented myself for the better.
John Thomson's new series, Saving Britain's Wildlife, starts on Quest Red on Aug 22 at 7pm
