Mathew Horne was born in Nottinghamshire and studied drama at Manchester University. Since then he has worked across TV, film and theatre but is probably best known for playing Gavin in the BBC’s Gavin & Stacey. The comedy ran for three seasons between 2007 and 2024 and won many awards, including four Baftas. He now lives between London and Scotland with his wife and two children. Horne will star as Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, directed by Jamie Glover, at the Crucible theatre in Sheffield, 10-31 October.

I first became aware of Lucia Keskin because she’d done a Gavin & Stacey pastiche in which she played all the characters, including me. She’s a really talented actor and comedian: she reminds me of a combination of the deadpan tone of Julia Davis and the expert mimicry of Morgana Robinson. Things You Should Have Done is her first sitcom, and it’s about grief and being orphaned. She tries to do all the things she feels she should have done in her life, in case she gets taken early, like her parents did. I find her writing incredibly bittersweet, but at the same time hysterically funny. It really is the best of the BBC for me at the moment.

Hattie is an old friend of mine, though we hadn’t spoken in about 10 years when she reached out and told me she’d written a book. It’s vaguely autobiographical, about a girl in her early 20s who moves up from Brighton to London to work in publishing. I find it really relatable because I’m from a provincial town, and I came to London to seek my fortune in my early 20s. She’s so raw and vulnerable and honest in this book – I felt this was the closest I’d ever got to understanding a woman’s perspective, particularly a young woman in the big city trying to navigate relationships and her future. It was really enlightening for me.

(dir. Kane Parsons, 2026)

I absolutely loved every aspect of this film, so much so that I’m going to watch it again tonight. The director is 21, which is extraordinary – there was hype around that, and then a bit of backlash, because his dad works in Hollywood and people were saying he’s a nepo baby. But it’s a really accomplished piece of work: it’s a psychological horror film, open to interpretation, with a minimalist aesthetic. It’s about a man, an alcoholic divorcee, who is dealing with his trauma. He runs a furniture store, and finds a portal to a never-ending series of backrooms in which very odd and unusual things take place. It’s like a fever dream, with nods to David Lynch and Kubrick. He’s the real deal. I think it’s a real work of art.

I’ve always had an affinity with Scotland, but I did a DNA test a few years ago and found out I’m 51% Scottish. I suppose I’ve appropriated the culture since finding out that most of my blood is Scottish. When I met my wife, I took her to Scotland innumerable times to try to find a place that she was as excited about as I was, and we landed on the Isle of Skye. Last year I got a place there, and it’s my little haven. I adore that island. There’s something incredibly magical about it: the atmosphere, the scenery, the people. It’s wild and rugged. When I’m up there, I feel like London and all that other stuff doesn’t even exist, or it’s certainly not as important in my life. Skye is a real sanctuary and place of peace for me.

This is a very neat bit of software. Each word appears in the middle of the screen, and it helps you read much more quickly than if you were reading left to right, as we do in English. What’s interesting about it is it makes you concentrate more – I presume it’s fantastic for people with ADHD, because it really forces you to engage with what you’re reading. It reminds me of a film called Short Circuit, in which a robot could absorb all this information, entire books, in seconds. It felt very much like you were being the character, Johnny 5. It’s a cool app.

Interview by Kathryn Bromwich