Hello I'm Krestey 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 1992 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a comic actor, a patriotic Scott and a committed

socialist he grew up in a middle-class Glasgow family. He went to a public school

which he didn't like and then to art school which he did. He first became

noticed in the early 80s as one of the new breed of comic performers whose

anarchic humor characterized television programs such as the comic strip, The Young Ones and Saturday Night Live.

But it wasn't until the BBC series Tooty Fruty in 1987 that he achieved fame in his own right.

Although these days he has to be tempted away from his

beloved Scotland his reputation is now international. One of his most recent films

Nuns on the Run has played successfully on both sides of the Atlantic. He is of course Robbie Coltrane.

I was very careful there, Robbie, to describe you as a comic actor, not as a comedian.

You make a very strong differentiation between the two days.

Well, it's not really because... you make a very strong differentiation between the two?

Well, it's not really because of any sort of snobbery

or because I think being a comic actor is any better a craft

than being a comedian.

But I just think that being a comedian is such a different thing really.

A comedian really is somebody who stands up alone in the stage

and offers the world his sensibility, which is an enormously brave thing to do.

And I get up on the stage and hide behind sens that usually written by other people and I think you know it's a fair distinction

But then you've got people like Lenny Henry and John Sessions yes and Ben Elton I suppose they are people who have stand-up acts but who also act.

...