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Published: 11 November 2010
by MATTHEW LEWIN

RICHARD Wilson initially turned down the part of Victor Meldrew in One Foot in The Grave, the role that was to make him famous.

“It’s absolutely true, I turned it down at first,” he told an audience at a Lifelines evening at Burgh House last Thursday.

“I had worked with the writer David Renwick before, and he told me that he wrote One Foot in the Grave with me in mind – which I didn’t take as much of a ­compliment.

“They sent me three scripts and there were things that I wasn’t sure about, including the fact that I felt I was too young for the part. Then they sent three more scripts, and I began to see what he was getting at, and then I knew I was going to do it.”

Asked whether the part had been a millstone round his neck or a meal ticket, Wilson replied: “Certainly not a millstone. It changed my life, and gave me financial security – I drink a much better Burgundy now!”

He also confirmed that he only says the series’s famous catchphrase – I don’t believe it! – for charity.

“Jonathan Ross gave £20,000 for cancer research for me to say it,” said Wilson. “I’ll do it tonight for £10,000.

“People do ask me to say it all the time, and I’m not sure why. It only worked when Victor Meldrew was in character. For me to say it for someone in the middle of Hampstead High Street just wouldn’t make any sense. So I don’t say it. It’s quite hard on kids who ask me, but I don’t say it for them either.”

But he admitted he was quite happy when Meldrew was killed by fellow Scottish actor Hannah Gordon.

“Actually, I was relieved,” said Wilson. “I was appearing in Waiting for Godot in Manchester at the Royal Exchange, and David Renwick came to see me. ‘I’m thinking of killing ­Victor,’ he told me. And I said immediately: ‘Kill him!’ I think we both felt that we had reached the point where we had done our best work on the series and we wanted to quit while it was still good.”

Wilson was born in Greenock, Renfrewshire, into what he described as an “upper working-class” family. His father was head timekeeper in a Clydeside shipyard.

And although he was a “painfully skinny and adenoidal” child, and rather solitary and shy, he got the acting bug at an early age.

But he was not always encouraged. One high school English and ­drama teacher, Miss ­Irving, when Wilson ­suggested he wanted to be an actor, told him: “Don’t be stupid, boy, you can’t speak!”

Wilson said that when he left school aged 17 he wasn’t confident enough to go into acting, and instead became a medical research technician in hospital laboratories, including Paddington General Hospital when he came down to London and moved into a residential club in Belsize Park.

But he carried on in amateur theatre, also ­taking acting courses at the City Literary ­Institute. It was only when he was 27 that he finally applied to the Royal Academy of ­Dramatic Art (RADA), and was accepted as a mature student.

“I did a review sketch for my audition, and the panel had never had ­anyone do that before and they laughed quite a lot. I think that’s what got me in.

“Being at RADA was frightening at first. I was 27 and I had never been a student. But also ­exhilarating – acting all day long was great.”

Wilson also spoke about his strong commitment to the Labour Party, which stemmed from his background in Scotland.

“I remember coming down the Clyde Valley on the train and you could see all the tenements of the shipbuilders down in the smog, and when you looked up at the hills, there were these huge mansions owned by the shipyard bosses, and it struck me that the ­difference was just too enormous,” he said.

“I joined the Labour Party because I felt the gap between rich and poor was too great. Unfortunately, after we gained power in 1997 it became even greater, and that was a big disappointment to me.”