Ep. 564 - Neil Pearson - From Drop the Dead Donkey and all four Bridget Jones films
My Time Capsule
Cast Off Productions
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2026
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Neil Pearson is probably best known for his role as Dave Charnley in Drop the Dead Donkey and as Richard Fink in all four Bridget Jones films. He was nominated for the 1994 BAFTA for Best Actor for Between the Lines and some of his other television and film roles include All the Small Things, Waterloo Road, In the Club ad Fever Pitch with Colin Firth .
Neil Pearson is our guest in episode 564 of My Time Capsule and chats to Michael Fenton Stevens about the five things he'd like to put in a time capsule; four he’d like to preserve and one he’d like to bury and never have to think about again .
Neil Person’s rare books website - https://www.neilpearsonrarebooks.com .
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Produced and edited by John Fenton-Stevens for Cast Off Productions .
Music by Pass The Peas Music .
Artwork by matthewboxall.com .
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to my time capsule. My name's Mike Fent and Stevens. |
| 0:15.0 | And my time caption is a podcast where people tell me five things from their life they wish they had in a time capsule. |
| 0:21.2 | Four things they cherish and one thing they'd like to bury and forget. |
| 0:25.2 | My guest in this episode is the actor Neil Pearson, |
| 0:28.8 | whose career has included such highlights as Between the Lines, Drop the Dead Donkey, |
| 0:33.7 | Waterloo Road, the Booze Cruise films with Mark Benton, Martin Cloons and Claire Skinner, |
| 0:38.8 | plus four Bridget Jones Diaries with Rene Zellweger. |
| 0:42.9 | He is also a very successful antiquarian book dealer, as you will hear, |
| 0:47.1 | and he's an author of a book about the publisher Jack Cahain and the Obelisk Press. |
| 0:51.8 | Again, Neil talks about that in this episode. |
| 0:55.4 | I don't think Neil actually needs much introduction, but he does require praise, especially from me, because this episode |
| 1:00.8 | was recorded when Neil was in London, and I was stuck in Panama, waiting for a replacement |
| 1:05.7 | passport for my wife. As a result, we had run very low on episodes to release for my time capsule, not a thing |
| 1:12.4 | we do that often. But despite Neil's well-known aversion to talking about himself, he very |
| 1:17.0 | kindly agreed to save us. So here is my hero, Neil Pearson. |
| 1:26.3 | You lovely man. |
| 1:28.0 | Hello, Pumpkin. |
| 1:29.3 | Neil, I can't tell you how delighted I am to see you. |
| 1:31.7 | What an extraordinary thing to do, bless you for this. |
| 1:34.4 | Oh, it's easy. |
| 1:35.1 | What an extraordinary thing to do you're in, losing passports. |
| 1:39.0 | Don't blame me. |
... |
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