Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in 1995,

and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My cast away this week is an actor. His career, as he cheerfully admits himself, has had its ups and downs,

and by no means everything he's done has been of the best quality. But it seems unlikely he'll

have to accept second-rate work in the future. In films such as Morris, Remains of the Day,

and most recently Four Weddings in a Funeral, he's attracted a huge following,

playing parts which seem to correspond naturally to his school and Oxford background.

He's now firmly established as a cinematic symbol of a certain type of Englishman,

a curious cross as someone put it between Tigger and Lord Byron. He is Hugh Grant.

Are you happy with that kind of description, Hugh? I mean, is that how you see yourself as kind of

English Carrie Grant Denoujure? Well, I don't know. There was quite a few things in that. I've got

Carrie Grant and Tigger and Byron. Well, yeah, Tigger, certainly. The quintessential Englishman

is slightly annoying. I'm not going to get annoyed, but it's slightly annoying because I like to

think that my range is sensationally wide and extraordinarily versatile. Well, maybe it's going

to become that. It's just how we've perceived you, I suppose, so far. Yes, maybe in the films

that have been prominent. But it seems to be where you're heading and where people say you're heading

is for that Carrie Grant, if you like, type of role, which is the intelligent comic leading man,

which is, you know, there aren't many of them around. Are there any of them around?

I think, you know, sort of what Tom Hanks kind of does, but you're right. Maybe that would

account for the very surprising sort of sudden niceness of people, particularly in America.

Maybe there's a shortage of people who can handle light comedy. But your difficulty must be that

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