Ben Miller has faced some tough audiences in his time, but he says reading the children’s book he was writing to his son presented him with the most demanding critical response he has yet encountered.
‘Oh my word, seven-year-olds are brutal,’ he says. ‘They’ll immediately tell you: that’s not right, nobody would say that. And they’re honest: if they get bored, they’re up and off. Seriously, if you want to know if what you are doing is any good, read it to a seven-year-old.’
Ben Miller has faced some tough audiences in his time, but he says reading the children’s book he was writing to his son presented him with the most demanding critical response he has yet encountered
Miller is not the first celebrity to write a children’s book – indeed, this Christmas it may be harder to encounter a famous person who has not penned a kids’ story. But despite being part of a much-loved double act with Alexander Armstrong and starring in the BBC comedy cop show Death In Paradise, the actor insists he has not been published simply because of who he is.
‘I really didn’t expect I’d get a deal,’ he tells me when we meet in a pub near London’s Paddington station before he heads back home to the Cotswolds. ‘Actually I thought the opposite. So two years ago I wrote the first one on spec.’
It was a story he had frequently told his oldest child, Jackson, then aged 11. Called The Night I Met Father Christmas, it tells of a boy encountering Santa and following him around the world on his delivering duties.
Several publishers bid for the right to take it on, and the book proved a top seller, shifting more than 25,000 copies. Miller then signed a two-book deal, so now he can write one for each of his three children. His latest is called The Boy Who Made The World Disappear.
‘It was written for Harrison, my middle child, and it tells the story of a seven-year-old boy who misbehaves at a party and instead of a balloon is given a black hole on a string. Anything that makes him angry he can put in there. So for the first time in his life, he doesn’t have to lose his temper. It gives him an experience of control he never had before.’
Though the sense of control doesn’t last long. ‘He hates broccoli so that goes in there, homework ends up in it. But he takes it too far and starts putting things in there he shouldn’t – the bully at school, his own parents – and sooner or later he has to figure out how to get them out again.’
The story was something of a labour of love, because Miller has long been intoxicated by the concept of the black hole. ‘It’s the ultimate bogey man,’ he says. ‘It is the thing of nightmares. But they are real and they’re out there. And the latest theory is that there might be some as small as a balloon. Imagine that? Being eaten up by something the size of a balloon. That’s why it was such a great idea: that you have control over something so primeval is a great story.’
‘Being eaten up by something the size of a balloon. That’s why it was such a great idea: that you have control over something so primeval is a great story’
Which begs the question: if a black hole is a useful device for changing the world, what would Miller himself shove in one?
‘Can you put Brexit in a black hole?’ He grins. ‘Now you mention it, quite a few casting directors who didn’t give me jobs. And impoliteness. I’m a politeness fascist. When you’re queueing for the till, a new till opens and the person at the back of the queue goes to the front of the new till: that makes my blood boil. Straight in the black hole.’
Writing about black holes came naturally to Miller – he studied physics at Cambridge University, inspired by Stephen Hawking. ‘I went to see him lecture,’ he says. ‘It was like the world’s greatest pianist giving a recital.’
It was at Cambridge that he met Alexander Armstrong, and the two fell in with a crowd who have all gone on to extraordinary success: former Bake Off presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, the playwright Jez Butterworth, Armstrong’s quiz collaborator Richard Osman and Rachel Weisz were all contemporaries. It was a time, he says, charged with possibilities.
Writing about black holes came naturally to Miller – he studied physics at Cambridge University, inspired by Stephen Hawking
‘It was so encouraging. I’d see Rachel and Jez doing stuff and I’d think yes, I could do that,’ he says. ‘We were at the tail end of an artistic revolution that started in the Sixties and went on through punk, inspiring the next generation with the idea that anybody could do it. For whatever reason, that has died away in culture. The opportunity and encouragement for a wide range of people is no longer there. We really need to rediscover it.’
From the moment he encountered these student thespians he was determined to make a career out of comedy and drama. Though it took him until earlier this year to finally achieve the drama side of his ambition, when he was cast as the lead in ITV’s forthcoming Sticks And Stones, a three-part drama by Doctor Foster writer Mike Bartlett. It’s the first time he has ever landed a non-comedy part.
‘To put it bluntly, I get offered parts in comedy; for drama I have to audition,’ he says. ‘And I wanted to do this so much, I was sitting there nervously outside the room twisting the script in my hand. It was like being transported back to when I first started out. Xander and I still talk about the potato years, because for a long time when we were starting out we only ate potatoes.’
It’s not like that any more. Armstrong has gone on to huge success, largely as a result of Pointless. But Miller says he has never been jealous of his former comedy partner. ‘One of the reasons I loved working with him is that he’s brilliant at things I can’t do. I can’t sing, I can’t play the piano, I certainly couldn’t host a panel game. I promise you, it is really hard to present Pointless and make it look as easy as he does. Way beyond me.’
Besides, Miller’s one venture on to a quiz show was not a great success.
‘I went on Pointless Celebrities and I was out in the first round. The clock’s ticking, the audience is looking at you – it’s not the same as being at home. Both Xander and Richard relentlessly took the mickey out of me. I’ve never been able to live it down.’
‘Sticks And Stones’ is on ITV, December 16 at 9pm. ‘The Boy Who Made The World Disappear’ is published by S&S, priced £12.99