Interview
Interview
Tom Read Wilson has a poem about Roman toilet etiquette
Getting to know one of TV's most eloquent and omnipresent personalities ahead of his new tour, The A–Z of Me
At Ticketmaster, we’re no strangers to putting together an A–Z of an artist’s life. It’s a great way of exploring the full span of someone’s career, even if some letters inevitably prove trickier than others. Not for Tom Read Wilson.
Since first appearing on the front desk on Celebs Go Dating, the loquacious logophile has built his public persona around an infectious love of language, becoming one of television’s most distinctive voices in the process. So when we ask him about the letter X, he doesn’t bat an eyelid. His answer? Xylospongium – a Roman sponge on a stick that he cheerfully describes as “perhaps the world’s worst antique”, and one of the few he’s happy to lack in his “little cuckoo-clock of a flat” that’s “groaning with curios”.
But why so averse to adding another antique? “There’s a whole poem about it,” he tells me, “which I can do for you if you’d like?”
Xylon and spongos in ancient Greek
Combine to make the world’s worst antique.
Spongos is sponge and xylon is wood,
A sponge on a stick which Romans would
Use to wipe themselves right after a poo.
You see, they’d no loo roll. In fact, they’d no loo.
This item was used in a Roman latrine
With a vinegar vat to help keep it clean.
It’s no longer used to wipe anyone’s bum.
So long, farewell, xylospongium.
It’s just as well Read Wilson has a word for everything, because his new live show, A–Z of Me, sees him journey through the alphabet via stories, songs and snapshots from his life. Expect a variety show of sorts, as the presenter and performer will no doubt dip into his time on stage and on screen. Ahead of the September tour, we caught up with him to chat Shakespeare, Julie Andrews and following in the footsteps of the Grand Tourists.
Who would you most like to be stuck in a lift with?
Oh gosh, I think it has to be Shakespeare. I am so bewitched by the sonnets. In fact, there are three in my show. They spoke to me from my teenage years in the most profound way. I thought, gosh, here are 154 love letters, essentially, 130 of which seem to be to a young man that he’s actually bewitched by. It felt like a hand reaching across 400 years. And yet nobody will quite conclusively say that, even though it seems to be so personal, because he’s so mercurial. He’s such an exemplar of every shade of a lover in them: jealous, adoring, passionate. I’d love to get the whole story finally, unequivocally. Who was Mr W. H.? The whole bit. And I think, what a wonderful opportunity to pump someone, being stuck in a lift.
Do you have a favourite sonnet?
Oh, I do. I’ve forgotten the number. It’s, “O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power / Dost hold Time’s fickle glass, his sickle hour…” It’s number 126!
Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Let me think outside the box. I think perhaps, although it would be fascinating, I’d be a bit nervous to be stuck in a lift with a Martian. Because we might be rather mutually suspicious, and I’ve always been able to mitigate that with language, but of course we wouldn’t share any language. Even if I tried to sign or communicate in some other way, it might appear a threat to the Martian instead of an olive branch. So I think that would be scary.
What’s your weirdest interaction with a famous person?
There was one that was very surprising with Julie Andrews. I didn’t properly meet her, but I was going with a chum on Old Compton Street, in the heart of Soho in the gay district, and plum in the middle is the Prince Edward Theatre. They were doing a gala performance of Mary Poppins, and she was the big guest. It was very star-studded. Nigella Lawson came, and Elle Macpherson came, and with both those wonderful women, it was fascinating because suddenly this whisper went down Old Compton Street that Julie Andrews was coming.
Everybody got very excited, and this massive crowd formed outside the Prince Edward Theatre. We got to see the press being rather vociferous when Nigella and Elle went in. They were both very good because they just said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, but it’s a family night for us tonight.” But when Julie arrived, it was the most extraordinary thing I’d ever seen. She got out of the car and blinded the press with niceness. She went, “Oh, hello everybody!” and waved frantically. They just… stopped, they were slightly dazzled by that. She didn’t have to make any protestations because she simply glid – is that the past tense of glide? – she glid or glided in without any interruption.
Is Julie a bit of a hero for you?
Oh yes. I love all of the Golden Age of Broadway. Robert Goulet, Rex Harrison, Mary Martin, Shirley Jones, Gordon MacRae. Oh! All of those people are my great heroes. I was very nervous when I met Angela Lansbury at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, and I was very nervous because she was such a hero. It happened by accident because I was with my best friend and we were seeing Gigi. I said to her, “I can’t believe Angela Lansbury’s sitting there,” because I’d been playing Anyone Can Whistle that very morning. For context, it’s a Stephen Sondheim show that only ran for nine days on Broadway, it was such a flop. Even these days it’s relatively obscure.
Somebody in her group happened to be within earshot and said, “You know, if you’d said Beauty and the Beast, this wouldn’t be happening. But because you said Anyone Can Whistle, I’m going to convey you to her.” I was suddenly seized by panic. I said, “Oh no, you mustn’t.” But he said, “Just repeat what you said to me.” So I told her, “I can’t believe you’re here because I was listening to Anyone Can Whistle this very morning.” She said, “My goodness, that’s a blast from the past.”
Then she held out this elegant, long-fingered, translucent, befreckled hand. I held it briefly… and didn’t wash for about three days. I just loved it. But I was terrified.
What work of yours didn’t get the attention that you think it deserved?
I did a travelogue for Channel 5 following in the footsteps of the Grand Tourists. I suppose it was what you’d call a modest success. But I did feel very proud of that because it moved me so deeply, I really came out of that experience transmogrified. I can’t tell you: to stand in the Uffizi Gallery with an expert—and nobody else, apart from a cameraman and a sound man—in a room with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus for an hour… Normally there’s such a bottleneck that you can’t stand still for more than about a minute if you’re very lucky. It was just breathtaking.
I also discovered the humility of the artists in Italy. Michelangelo said something like, “There’s an angel in the marble, and I carved to set him free.” He felt that he was simply a vessel for some sort of divinity. He didn’t feel that he himself was the talent. The humility is staggering. It happened to me because somebody painted my portrait during that travelogue, and I was so moved by it – I have it in my bedroom, actually. I waxed rhapsodic about his talent and his skill. He simply said, “No, no, no. I look at you. I look at you until I see you beyond your countenance. Then my body becomes a vessel and it transfers onto the canvas. It’s that simple.”
I thought, “Well… it’s really not that simple.”
What did 12-year-old you imagine you’d be doing now?
Well, my absolute tunnel-vision ambition was to be clutching a Tony at 20. The gong, not any old Anthony…
If you had to have a song playing everytime you walked into a room, what would it be?
There’s a song in the show that I love, which I think is among my favourite songs. It’s by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, and it’s called ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’.
I love it because Lorenz Hart is a great exemplar of nominative determinism. He wrote wonderful songs that are suffused with heartache. Even when it’s a pure love song, as ‘Bewitched’ is, there’s still this wonderful poignancy – this sense of yearning – running through it.
What’s a skill that no one really knows you’re good at?
Well, I like to bake. But I seldom do it unless the sproutlets come, because otherwise I have rather a sweet tooth and I’d simply eat it all myself. My sister has three sproglets and sometimes my godchildren come to visit, and then it’s very good. I have actually finished making a brioche kind of chocolate bread and butter pudding, but I can eat that out. I’ll have I’ll have it for putting over multiple nights.
Would you ever do Celebrity Bake Off?
I did a similar thing called Celebrity Best Home Cook with Claudia Winkleman and Mary Berry. It was an amazing thing because, it was in the height of Covid, and so they built a mezzanine for Mary. She had opera glasses and she would, they were very powerful and she could peer down at our islands and see what we were up to.
Do you have any superstitions?
My mum has so many superstitions and I don’t always know whether I believe in them, but I have copied them since I was knee high to a grasshopper, so I don’t walk under the ladders. I ever see a lone little magpie, I would say, I would salute and say, “Hello, Mr. Magpie, how’s your wife?”
