More Laurie

Talking about Hugh Laurie, when I was writing my previous entries about Hugh Laurie and his famous rowing father, Ran Laurie, I was desperately looking for an old issue of the Telegraph Magazine, which I knew that I should have in my archives (please read “messy piles of rowing stuff which is all over the place…”). I remember that Hugh Laurie was on the cover of the magazine, which was in the published mid-1990s.

Well, the other day, when I was looking for some rowing things in the closet off my Rowing Room, I found a box with old magazines – and there it was! The magazine, from 4 May 1996, which was a supplement to The Daily Telegraph, has a feature article about Laurie written by Lynn Barber Tangles. This is the time when he and Stephen Fry had finished their fourth round of the very popular Jeeves and Wooster series, and Laurie’s novel The Gun Seller had just been published.

Laurie says in the article that he thinks it is his Presbyterian upbringing that has made him feel guilty that he never had to pay any great price for being successful. He says about his father, who was still alive at that time, “my father, who is a man of extraordinary gifts and great accomplishments and really a heroic figure […] is the most modest man alive. If there is any queue that he can stand absolutely at the back of, he will find it. So that was the prevailing attitude. And I still admire that, I admire it in my father and I admire it generally, but it just so happens that in this particular career I’ve chosen it’s not actually very practical.”

In the interview, Hugh Laurie mentions that he showed his father The Gun Seller, which he dedicated to him, before it was published. Ran Laurie got upset on the number of invectives in the book, so Hugh Laurie decided to re-read the novel, “Oh God,” he says in the article, “there are quite a few, actually. More than my father would like to read.” So, being a good son, he took them out.

That is one thing I like about Hugh Laurie, he is such a nice and decent chap.