Alexander Armstrong Fern Britton Meets...

I love this job, you know.

Talking to people about their faith,

no matter what their faith is

and discussing how it's influenced their daily lives,

their decisions on their careers.

And when I'm with them, I often take an awful lot of photographs,

and I've got a card here I really must get printed up at some stage,

but, you know, finding somewhere to...

ORGAN PLAYS

Oh, I say, that's a bit of luck.

LAUGHTER

Is that the 128 megabytes memory card or the 256?

The 256.

Good, well, that's all very straightforward.

Should have those ready for you...

..in about an hour.

Perfect, that's the length of the chat with my next guest.

See you in about an hour, then.

A direct descendant of William the Conqueror,

my guest this week

is one of the most quintessentially English gentlemen there is.

Alexander Armstrong made his name

playing stiff upper-lipped characters

as part of a comedy double act.

The big thing about me is I'm just myself, and that's who I am, right?

And if you don't like that, then you can just deal with it, girlfriend,

because that's who I am!

The quiz show he presents has such a devoted following

that it's become a national institution.

APPLAUSE

Right, if everyone's ready, let's play Pointless.

He spent his childhood immersed

in the rituals of the Church of England.

I think he would say he's a good churchman.

Church is part of who he is.

And if that's not enough, he's also the new James Bond...

Well, of the rodent world.

Saving the world's what I do, Penfold.

But throughout his successful career of comedy and broadcasting,

Alexander has held another passion.

One that he's been hiding in plain sight.

# Your hair is cool

# Your eyes divine... #

Whenever he could,

Alexander Armstrong grasped the opportunity to sing.

# You will get a sentimental feeling... #

It's a love that began in the church pews as a choirboy.

Now Alexander is finally hoping to take his singing career main stage.

# I would be strong,

# For there is much to suffer... #

It will only cement him further in the nation's heart.

But despite a charmed life of talent and fame,

Alexander hasn't escaped the blows that life throws at all of us.

There are still things back there that I haven't really...

..entirely dealt with, I think.

I'm really looking forward to meeting Alexander Armstrong,

and finding out if that affable, slightly bumbling fellow

that we know and love so well on Pointless is really him -

and has a childhood spent sitting in the pews of churches

influenced the way he feels about God?

And is he really that nice?

As I arrive at Alexander's house,

I can't resist meeting some of his rather unusual family members.

So this is Denzel and Dennis?

This is Denzel and Dennis.

In another field, we have Delilah and Dominic.

They're all beginning with D, you might have noticed.

-OK.

-There's a bit of a family soap opera going on at the moment.

One of them suddenly turned on another one,

and that one will be filthy because they all spit at it.

It's so unfair.

It's miserable, really.

I think, though, I'm going to have to take you inside,

-I want to talk to you.

-OK.

-Yes.

-Let's go and do it.

To the house.

Alexander Henry Fenwick Armstrong, known to all as Xander,

was born on the 2nd of March 1970, the youngest of three children.

You have an older brother?

Yeah - older brother, older sister.

There's only a year and a half between them,

-and then a gap of three years and then me.

-Ooh.

So, yes, quite...

I think, we're very close, actually, we're a very close family,

but inevitably they always were the tennis players

and I was always the ball boy, if you see what I mean.

-The three...

-And when their friends come round,

they shut the door in your face?

Slightly - and so my reaction was to be a pain, which I did very well.

The Armstrong family lived in the wilds of Northumberland,

his mother a magistrate and his father the village doctor.

I imagine he spent his entire childhood

running through hills, scrumping apples

and playing the violin or something,

that's my guess.

Well, I think he had a very old-fashioned upbringing.

I think my upbringing is fairly old-fashioned,

but not in comparison with his. He went to school on a donkey!

I'm not sure they had shoes, sort of dirt floors,

lived on a farm or something.

I think they relied on their own invention a lot.

I think that's probably where a certain amount

of his creativity comes from, because,

let me tell you, if you grew up there, you had to be creative!

You were remote when you are growing up in Northumberland, weren't you?

We were. And we lived, we really did live right in the middle of nowhere.

I mean, I wouldn't have had it any other way, but we were about

four-and-a-half miles away from our nearest village.

Despite such a remote existence,

community was at the heart of the Armstrong family.

I think, when you're the son of a doctor,

you are necessarily very involved in your wider community.

And I think that has had a real impact on him.

The highlight of the Armstrong's social life

was their weekly visit to church.

Church was one of the events in our...

You know, we lived in the middle of nowhere,

we'd come into the village for church.

It was quite exciting - we'd see people.

You know, my father was a church warden,

and...and his father before him!

It just sounds like such a sort of...

"Oh, here we go." But it was a big part of our week.

You know, in parts...

I think my father would very much see it as part of his,

part and parcel of his job as a doctor, as well.

Talking of which, I mean, my goodness,

the number of times medical emergencies would happen in church,

because it would be Sunday morning, there'd be lots of people

that would come from the old people's home and things like that.

So at least two or three times a year

Dad would have to jump over pews

and we'd be sort of beaming with pride at our father,

the great medical man who would then rush to the aid...

Our father, who art a doctor.

Who art a doctor, yeah.

I can't pretend that we didn't fidget and muck about

and generally misbehave.

It was great, I loved church.

When Alexander was very young,

he made a secret discovery in his parents' house.

It would be the start of a lifelong passion.

I would wake up before everyone else woke up,

and I could never go back to sleep.

I would always go downstairs and explore.

The first thing I always went to was the record player,

and I would just put a record on, which was completely forbidden,

but down in the early hours I could put records on.

-I just loved the act of...

-Oh, yes.

You'd bring the control down and the arm would then come down

-in its own sweet time.

-Oh!

-I loved that.

VIOLIN CONCERTO PLAYS

And what were you listening to?

I would listen to my parents' record collection.

I'd work my way through, and it was largely classical music.

But it just felt so grown up.

I loved that. I think being the youngest, it mattered a lot to me,

to be able to live in this rather grown-up world of classical music.

So I would learn to love, from a very early age,

Beethoven violin concerto -

I remember listening to that.

Alexander's love for music

would continue to grow throughout his life,

but his idyllic rural childhood was not to last.

Like his older brother and sister before him,

Alexander was sent to boarding school.

How old were you when you are packed off to boarding school?

I was seven and a half when I went off to boarding school.

-That's young.

-It is young.

And that will sound to a lot of people

like an act of heartless brutality on the part of my parents, but...

I mean, really, it absolutely destroyed them, as well.

They absolutely hated us going off to boarding school,

but we lived in the middle of nowhere.

-Do you remember that first day...

-Oh, God, I do...

-When you turned up and had to wave your parents goodbye?

-I do.

I know. It was an evening, you'd turn up in the evening.

And you'd sort of - you'd been looking forward to it,

and you had no idea what it was going to be.

I literally had no idea at all.

You turn up and it's all fine,

you're quite excited when you're going.

Because it is exciting, you're going off -

it's one big sleepover

with lots of people who are going to be your best friends

and you have all your new kit

and you've got stuff with your name written on,

and you've got - you know, it's very exciting.

There's a torch with Armstrong written on it,

and a tuck box and things. It's...

And then you arrive, and all that resolve just goes...

"Gah..." You know, and...

Everyone's desperately trying to be cheerful,

and then the moment comes,

and your parents say, "Well, that's excellent.

"We'll write. We'll write to you," and then off they go.

It was pretty bleak. I mean...

There's no getting around the bleakness

of...of that.

But, oh, God, you miss, you miss home.

Home is almost a religious thing

and everything to do with home you revere and you hold tight.

Home would remain precious to Alexander,

but eventually he embraced boarding school life.

You did end up loving it.

Hogwarts is quite a good example - I can point to...

You have to imagine the enormous adventures and camaraderie

of that dormitory life, and wonderful friendships.

I mean, really, truly wonderful friendships that you have,

and actually, you do have a lovely time there, actually.

You do, and you are looked after very well.

It was at his boarding school

that Alexander was given the opportunity

to embrace his love for music and nurture a great talent.

Were you singing at prep school?

-Yes, that's where singing suddenly took hold.

-Ah!

Did you know you had a voice, before you got there?

I sort of did, actually, I sort of did.

I knew I could hold a tune.

And then when I got there I was very pleased,

because my brother had been in the choir there.

The choir was run by this absolute saint of a woman,

the headmaster's wife, Mrs Dakin, she was called.

We were taught in their house, so it wasn't done in a classroom,

it was done in a really nice - very sort of cosy,

around the kitchen table, and you're allowed to eat biscuits and things,

which no-one else was allowed to do.

It just felt like a really exciting privilege to do music.

So that was lovely, and music then took over.

Alexander would sing as a chorister for the rest of his education.

Day after day he would spend hours in holy buildings,

immersed in the long traditions of sacred language and music.

It would have a profound influence on him,

becoming the foundation of his Christian faith.

Like all little choristers,

he grew up from a very young age caught up in that daily literature,

that daily round of prayer

in a cavernous and beautiful building in Edinburgh,

at the Great Cathedral.

I think, for Xander,

and for many people who come to the church and religion through music,

there's a quality to music-making

that isn't just about notes and scores,

it is very much about offering the gifts

that they've been given by God in the service of the church.

So I think music is far more than just an art form for him,

I think it is part of his spirituality.

What is your faith, how would you describe it?

I don't know. For me, it's part and parcel with music, really.

It's through having sung...

I mean, not just sung a bit, but sung endlessly.

I mean, pretty much every day of the week

from...with a couple of breaks here and there,

but from the age of about 11 to the age of 23.

The service that belongs to you as a chorister is evensong.

-Oh, yes.

-That's the service that's yours.

You do that one five times a week.

CHOIR SINGS

It's very ancient and very ritualistic, which I love.

And it's full of beautiful music, which I love,

and it's full of pauses for reflection and contemplation.

It takes place at that lovely time of just when evening's coming in,

in the gathering darkness, in the naves.

I find that there's something...

immensely powerful and comforting in that, and I draw...

I draw huge comfort from that.

It's something that I think is a sort of presence.

I like going to church, I find it comforting.

I like that it's a place I can turn to

in desperate need.

When Alexander was 17 he faced the hardest moment of his young life.

Tragedy struck his family

when his younger cousin Alistair was being driven home from school

one day by his friend's mother and a drunk driver hit their car.

Alistair, his friend and his friend's mother were all killed.

I think when you were young you lost your cousin, didn't you,

-who was very young?

-I did, I did.

That must have been difficult, as a young man -

-you were only about 17, I think?

-Mm.

Yes, I was 17 and it came out of a clear blue sky.

These lovely cousins of ours.

That was...

I mean, just an extraordinary shock, really.

Funny how...

It's funny how the way life moves on.

You...

There are still things back there that I haven't really...

..entirely dealt with, I think, in a funny way.

I always know that it's a thing I can go back to and...

Um...

-Do you wish to stop?

-No, it's all right.

It's funny. One of the great...

I think one of things about life is you do...

..constantly move on.

And there's so much grouting

and so much weft and weave in our lives, um...

that you, you are able to move on.

It was just, yes, such an extraordinary shock

because you think, with...with young people,

you're always thinking of the future,

that's what young people are, that's what they represent.

So, yes, that's a, it's a...

really, really...

..harsh lesson in that ending, you know, in the reality of that ending.

But in a funny way,

it was the first time I started to think of...

..I suppose, think of spirit, actually.

Alistair... There are things that'll never die,

I'll always remember and always...

having been alive, he's therefore always alive, he's alive, that's it.

Alexander had found comfort in a faith

born from his time as a choirboy.

As he got older he moved nearer home to Durham School.

It's quite old-fashioned, lots of old Victorian values,

it was all about sport, really,

and if you weren't any good at sport -

and I wasn't especially good at sport -

you weren't really, you weren't really anyone, you know,

the sportsmen were revered.

To compensate for a lack of sporting prowess,

Alexander began to develop another talent.

Alex was always good fun in class,

he was lively, responsive, very witty.

He had wonderful impressions of the staff - very good mimic.

In fact, I would say a brilliant mimic.

I don't think he would object if I said he timed his efforts at A Level

very, very well indeed.

And I'll leave it at that - but he came out very well,

I think he got a grade A in English -

but in class he was good, outside of class he was better.

One of your teachers, Mr Dias...?

-Oh, yes...

-He remembers you very well

doing well in class but you were even better out of it

when you were doing all your impersonations.

Yes, it's funny how often comics say that.

Actually, that story that comedy arose out of mimicry.

It's a very easy way to win friends at school

when you arrive at a big school,

if you can actually get about five or six of the teachers off pat,

your...you become, your worth, your value, goes up colossally.

There was... We had a wonderful woman called Mrs Rollings,

who used to teach pottery...

-SOFT GEORDIE ACCENT:

-Pottery - and she had a very particular way

of talking. It's a smoker's... When people smoke,

there's a very tight-lipped,

sort of, you know, it's a smoker's way of talking.

And Mrs Rollings basically would talk about pottery "as a craft".

And I remember that we adored Mrs Rollings, she was lovely. Oh, God...

That's a Newcastle accent.

-That's right, yes.

-So, you were up in Newcastle?

That's right, I was in Durham.

I was at Durham.

After Durham, Alexander headed to Trinity College Cambridge.

At university, the comic side of Alexander was given room to blossom.

He'd got to Trinity on a choral scholarship,

but it was now that he also joined the famous comedy club,

The Footlights.

He was a wonderful presence, because he was always acting,

doing Footlights and things like that,

and you could see how talented he was,

and even then he was singing,

and you could see there was something about him

that made you think, "I'm going to keep an eye on this guy."

Who were the names in your years?

In my... In my gang, Mel and Sue, lovely Mel and Sue.

Sacha Baron Cohen was there?

Sacha was there, as well.

I didn't know Sacha particularly well...

Will Sutcliffe was another part of that gang.

-Richard Osman?

-Richard Osman! But he wasn't in the Footlights.

-Oh, wasn't he?

-No! I know!

Funniest man, funniest man I've ever met,

and he wasn't in the Footlights.

We were in the same college together at Cambridge,

he moved with a different crowd than I did - and he still does!

It was in the Footlights

that Alexander was given the opportunity to hone his funny side.

Oh, make no mistake, these were terrible...

We used to write terrible things.

I think that's why Footlights is so good,

you get all these things out of your system.

Having written lots and lots of really terrible things,

you then start landing on things you think, "Ah, that's...

"Here we go, this is quite fun."

You start to learn how to formalise your meanderings,

that's probably it.

In 1992, Alexander reached the end of his formal education,

he had graduated, and now had to make a choice.

I was thinking, "Actually, what am I going to do?"

because I always imagined

that during that three-year period there would be a great moment of,

"Ahhh... Of course, I'm going to go and work for ICI,"

or, "Ahhh, of course, I'm going to be a chartered accountant!"

It's beckoning.

These things I thought were going to be perfectly plain to me.

Nothing, nothing at all, not a hint, a clue of anywhere I wanted to go.

However, the music had been -

you know, you're trained, you're trained,

you work so hard, your technique, your discipline,

everything is at its absolute peak,

so you come to the end of your third year of singing

in this semiprofessional capacity,

right at the top of your game, 22, 23,

I was the soloist on the last recording we did with Trinity

and then, then what?

Am I going to go on, go on and maybe study music?

The other way was to go towards comedy -

and that way I could instantly see what was going to happen,

because a gang of friends of mine were setting up this comedy club

in Notting Hill and saying, "Come on, come and be a part of it."

So I went - I went comedy.

And shortly after university,

Alexander met the man who would become his first other half.

Ben was at Cambridge, I knew of Ben,

Ben was quite well-known at Cambridge,

he was a very conspicuous figure in the Footlights.

He had a band, went out with Rachel Weisz.

You know, Ben was a bit of a sort of golden boy.

I mainly heard about Xander through reputation,

because I heard about this very, very funny actor

who was always laughing in the plays that he was in,

he couldn't stop corpsing, basically,

during any play that he was in!

I'd seen Ben perform -

and Ben has this lovely line in just acutely observed character comedy.

He has a sort of mannered comic style

which is so subtle, but once you've clicked into it

it's just irresistible,

and he's just a wonderful, wonderful, comic personality, Ben.

Did you finally meet on a drunken night?

We finally met on a drunken night, pretty much.

Yeah, and we went straight into writing, writing sketches.

I used to write these little sketches and send them to him,

IN the hope of sort of enticing him

to, you know, come and be in a... come and do a double act with me.

And yeah, eventually, we sort of decided to,

one of the sketches I sent him,

we performed it at a sort of sketch night.

I think I walked on stage,

immediately forgot all of the lines that I'd written.

And we just laughed, we laughed and laughed and laughed

and we both had the same sort of, slightly off-kilter

sense of humour.

It's a really, really fortunate thing,

but something just clicked.

Armstrong had met Miller -

but to make it in comedy you first need to make it

at the Edinburgh Fringe.

We'd gone in 1994 and had, I think, the most bruising review -

which I can still remember every word of.

I remember it saying,

"Armstrong and Miller have invented a new kind of comedy -

"one which isn't funny and has no jokes whatsoever."

And we'd been really quite... That had really cut us to the quick.

But despite the slating, Alexander and Ben refused to give up.

And we'd worked really hard for a couple of years -

we didn't go back in '95, but in '96 we went back,

feeling we'd really...and we were like a different act.

It's very competitive, it's a cut-throat business now.

And basically there's young guys like us...

-Muscling in.

-Muscling in!

So, your career path could be

presenting Edinburgh Nights in ten years.

Yeah!

And we had the most amazing time,

and we got nominated for the Perrier Award,

and we got given our own show, and it was amazing.

Guys, if you're thinking of going out drinking tonight, OK,

could you do something for us?

Before you order a second beer, just think to yourself,

do I really need another to have fun?

Because the second beer can easily lead to a third beer,

and before you know it, you've had four beers.

That's a great night out for you guys, sure,

but it's overtime for your liver.

'The fantastic thing was the audience reaction,'

people just laughed at us on stage

and that's really what you, you know, that's sort of what you need,

and you need, sort of, people just to be laughing

at the combination of the two of you for a reason they can't explain.

In 1997, Alexander and Ben hit our screens with Armstrong And Miller.

I think my favourite Armstrong And Miller sketch

is anything with the RAF pilots in it.

Here, have you heard about Chalky and all this?

He's actually a spy for, like, that lot we're fighting.

-The Germans or whatever.

-No way!

Chalky? A spy?

-You mean Chalky?

-Yeah, man! Chalky.

Chalky Von Schmidt, a spy?

The genius of it, to take the language of the modern teenager

and put it in the mouth of a Battle of Britain pilot

is a level of genius on a sort of Python level.

I swear down. He's been giving the Germans

all, like, spoilers about the war and this.

Oh, my days, that is so two-faced!

It was a very particular thing we used to try and achieve

with Armstrong and Miller which was to go very much for style,

to try and pastiche style as well as we possibly could,

so you'd almost get a laugh from recognition,

rather than necessarily from gags,

and then we'd put something... we'd put a slightly odd tilt on it.

The train approaching Platform 2 is the 07:44 to Marylebone.

I love you all.

Let's hear it for commuting!

Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!

It's just two guys mucking about, two people who can really act,

which is quite unusual for comics, two guys who can really write,

which is less unusual, and two guys that had great chemistry

and right from the start, you could tell it was going to be a hit.

Armstrong and Miller would prove to be a successful double act

for the next 15 years.

Whilst working on the second series of Armstrong And Miller,

Alexander received some terrible news about a good friend of his.

Tell me about Charlie Waller.

I got to know Charlie very well because - through his brother,

his brother Rick was a very good friend of mine at Trinity.

He was just an absolute superstar, Charlie, one of the funniest...

genuinely funny, funny people you could ever wish to meet.

He would light up a room, Charlie, when he came in.

He was a big lad, a bit of a sort of...

He was a useful forward in rugby.

It was the summer of 1997, the summer of Princess Diana's death.

This is BBC Television from London.

A short while ago, Buckingham Palace confirmed the death of Diana,

Princess of Wales.

I remember the day after the Princess of Wales' funeral,

driving up to Sheffield.

I was driving up on the Sunday afterwards

and I remember the motorway just being lined with flowers,

it was...it just felt a bit dreamlike,

it was just a very odd thing.

I suddenly got a call

from my girlfriend, then, saying...

..Charlie Waller's killed himself.

And as I...

I should think, far too many of us know what that sensation is like

when you're... You know, we all get told snippets of news

like that, that just... Thwang!

And you are sort of thrown into a mad sort of, "What the...?

"Who? Charlie? Why?

"What?"

It turned out Charlie had been suffering...

suffering from depression for years

and nobody had particularly known, no-one had really known about it.

You know? But Charlie, of all people,

this great rock of a man,

should have been suffering all this time.

So, what Charlie's family did,

is they said, "Right, that's it," immediately, "We're not...

"We're not going to spend all this time lamenting Charlie.

"Charlie is too big a presence for that."

You know, again, there's my theory about people,

someone like Charlie, he doesn't die,

Charlie's around, Charlie will be around for a very, very long time.

Not least of all in the name of this -

he lives on in the name of this trust,

the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust,

which has been set up to deal with the issue of latent depression.

You know? I mean, latent, only to everyone else,

but depression that people keep under wraps.

And it's so hidden,

and young men don't have the dialogue to use and...

Exactly - and, tragically,

-it is young men that seem to be the most afflicted by it.

-Yes.

Extraordinary statistics.

And, yes, it's just a matter of...

As in, as in every area of life,

it's all about making sure channels of communication are maintained

-and always open.

-Yes. Yes.

Today, Alexander is a patron of the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust.

Our vision is of a world where people understand

and talk openly about depression.

Fantastic! A wedding!

By 2002,

Alexander had established himself as a regular presence on our screens,

both on programmes and in between them.

I'm not going to lie to you,

as a man of impeccable driving skill,

the reward for careful drivers tempts me.

Hang on!

Four of you, one of me - I make that Pimms o'clock, don't you?

Then, one day in April 2002,

he went on a shopping trip that would change his life.

We met when I was an events organiser at Harvey Nichols

and he was doing personal shopping

with his friend and my boss wanted to set us up.

I fell absolutely head over heels in love with her

the first time I saw her. I thought, just the most lovely person!

He took my number and he sent me...

it was quite, sort of...

quite an old-fashioned courtship in that he sent me texts every day,

which is not old-fashioned,

but we wouldn't see each other for a good couple of weeks

and they were very funny - every day I got a text,

very funny, telling me about his day and I thought,

"Oh, maybe he's quite interesting."

Did it all happen very quickly?

-Engagement and wedding?

-It did, really.

The engagement happened very... Oh, God, I knew instantly.

I mean, I really did know before terribly long

that she was exactly the person I wanted to marry.

Anyhow, I bit my tongue for as long as was decently possible,

then I think, really,

it was a year after we'd been going out I asked her to marry me,

which I think is probably, most people say,

"Well, that's a bit quick, isn't it?" But you know, I just knew.

Absolutely knew.

Today, Alexander and Hannah run a very busy household.

He's got a lot of children. He's got four sons, they're all mini Xanders.

Yes, we like to have a lot of dependants

dangling off us at any one time.

In fact, he's such a good dad that one of the main reasons

that I married my wife

was so that Xander would be the uncle

of my, as yet, unborn children.

So, we have two unbelievably naughty dogs.

-Hello!

-This is Genghis!

-Who's this?

-Hello, Genghis!

Here are the questions!

Do you...?

The animals are just crazy.

Two cats, five chickens.

I think they're just a family who can't stop.

Two Shetland ponies.

One old lady pony who's gorgeous, called Shimoo.

And sometimes she sounds a little anguished.

I think five llamas now.

Because juggling children, Xander and llamas, now,

is quite a burden for anyone to bear.

Listen, I think Xander just likes to surround himself

with life, you know?

He's got as many kids as I think he's allowed to have,

he tries to pack as many animals as he's allowed to have

into his life, as well.

You know, I think that tells you something about the man,

that he just wants life around him.

He wants to interact with it.

That's where he's happy.

Xander is a proper family man.

He loves his children and he is immensely kind and generous.

Alexander is keen for his children

to have the same Christian upbringing he had.

I know church means a lot to Xander.

We have Sunday lunch with him quite often and he's often late back

with whichever of the children he's taken to church. He always goes.

It's always lovely to see him with his boys,

and I think he delights in trying to introduce them

to the same tradition in which he grew up.

Of course, now he is so famous, he turns lots of heads -

but he is pretty much part of the family here at Saint Paul's.

It's a nice hour, just to sort of take out,

and it's really good for - I think it's great for the children.

It's good for the children to be a bit bored.

I like the idea of going to church,

and I like, as a result of having gone to church when we were little,

I'm perfectly comfortable in church,

and I therefore have great affection for the idea of church.

By 2003, Alexander's personal life was coming together.

But his professional life was starting to unravel.

Armstrong And Miller had continued for eight successful years,

but it was now showing signs of strain.

They were heading for a big bust-up.

Very good.

Well, I read, and you can tell me if this isn't real or true,

that you apparently had a bit of a hissy fit

and you were the one who went, "I'm stopping this for a bit."

-I did.

-Did you?

-I did have a hissy fit.

We'd been working together for about eight years by that stage.

I remember, we were working on a screenplay

and the screenplay we had started on,

we just got further and further away from the story that I really loved.

I did just say, "Right, sorry, I'm not enjoying this any more,

"la, la, la, la, la, I'm off." And...

-Yeah, it was quite a cathartic moment.

-Was it?

I felt he was entirely justified at the time, to be honest with you.

It really just deepens your relationship, I think.

Because if you don't voice those things,

it'll just come out in other ways.

You're better off just telling the person

what really annoys you about them!

It puts odd pressures on you, being a writer, trying to write -

not just writing stuff that you hope is going to be funny.

Mm.

And you're... You know,

to be sociable, your reaction if someone tells you a joke,

you would always say, "Ha-ha, that's great!"

If you are working and you are working with someone

and writing jokes together, you end up going,

"Mm, yeah, I think we need to lose a little bit from the middle

"and tighten up the end of it there."

It's not a great arena to be in.

You can do it for a long time,

but there comes a point when you just think,

"Oh, God, why don't you like any of the things I'm...?"

There comes a point where you do just...

you have slightly tested each other's patience.

There have been times when Xander's blown up at me,

and there's times when I've blown up at him.

It's not the kind of relationship where we then sit down

and discuss that for weeks on end,

trying to figure out who was right and who was wrong.

It's like a sibling relationship.

It's like, "OK, fair enough."

-Are you all right?

-Yes.

After four series, the pair took a five-year break.

Just I thought I was your main homeboy, isn't it?

Harsh.

Alexander needed to find a new job.

An opportunity arose to have a go in a new area of broadcasting.

Good evening.

Welcome to Have I Got News For You.

My name is Alexander Armstrong, and if I seem familiar to you,

it's because I'm a regular on ITV.

Footballers' Wives, Coronation Street, Emmerdale -

you name it, I've done some adverts in the middle of it!

Good evening and welcome to Have I Got News For You.

I'm Alexander Armstrong.

How many have you done? You hold the record.

I think I've done 25, or something like that.

I think, on the back of that, Countdown approached me

and said would I be interested in doing Countdown.

I liked the idea of that cos I love Countdown

and I love the idea of A JOB! You know?

I mean, this was an actual contract.

In my line of work, as a sort of jobbing comedian,

that's not really something you generally get.

People often say, "Why did you do this?"

or, "Why did you do this role? "Why did you do this programme?"

The short answer was always, "Because I was asked."

It's not like one... You're not sifting through things,

going, "No. No. I won't do that."

You basically just take... You get what you're given.

You didn't take Countdown...

I didn't take Countdown because the only thing about Countdown was,

sort of enshrined within Countdown

was Richard Whiteley's way of doing it.

So I didn't see a great deal of scope for making it my own

in that sort of way.

So I very reluctantly, and after great thought,

said, "No, actually, I won't do that."

Then I think that's what Pointless grew out of,

cos Endemol were just putting it together,

and they thought, "Well, actually... Ooh, we hadn't thought of him!"

Right, if everyone's ready, let's play Pointless.

It would be the birth of a show with an unusual approach.

All our players need to do is score as few points as they possibly can.

And the start of Alexander's second on-screen relationship.

I think we always thought at some point we'd work together,

and every time we met up, because we knew each other from college,

we'd always sit and have a gossip, and we'd always say,

"We must work together, we must work together."

I don't think either of us thought, 20 years later,

it would be quite in the way that we have done.

There's only one person left for me to introduce.

He asks the questions that make the inside of your head itch.

It's my Pointless friend, it's Richard.

Hiya. Hiya.

'There was an instant rapport because I've known him'

for 20 years.

It was one of those enormous bits of good fortune.

We never had to work at our relationship,

we never had to work at trying to make each other laugh

cos we knew how to immediately.

We went through, we did the top 70 most popular celebrities

with the initials AA.

It's great. I've got a whole list here if you want to see them

-at some point.

-Yeah...

-ALEXANDER CHUCKLES

Hold on a minute...

I'm just thinking of you.

It's interesting you weren't on the list.

It is 70 - that's a lot of people on there.

Yeah, that's a lot.

Pointless, I absolutely love it.

I think it's a very, very hard game to play.

And I can tell you that with some...experience,

having been out in the first round of Pointless Celebrities.

Hello, I'm Ben and I used to be in a comedy double act.

LAUGHTER

That's debatable!

If you just played that game,

it wouldn't be nearly so entertaining a programme.

What's brilliant about it is that Richard and Xander are given

the opportunity and the room to also enjoy what they're doing.

-You used to do a show with Ben Miller, right?

-I did, yes.

-What was it called?

-Armstrong And Miller.

Armstrong And Miller? Terrific. Cos I used to watch it.

I'm honestly a fan, I'm a fan,

but, Ben, if I'm brutally frank with you,

I mainly watched it for Ben because I liked the comedy bits.

I liked your bit because you do

the slightly dour, kind of straight man stuff.

You know, "Oh, God, that's a bit depressing."

Then Ben comes along and boom, boom, punch line, punch line,

smashing it into the net.

Then you think, cos when Ben does something, I'm laughing,

I'm just doubled up like that.

Then I get a minute and a half where I can relax

cos you're on and you're doing something.

You think, here he is, like the comedy Grim Reaper.

That's me. That was... Yeah...

APPLAUSE

Richard and I, we've just had such a lovely time across the series.

I think lots of the most successful shows recently

have been presented by duos.

You've got Mel and Sue, Ant and Dec, and I think it's the same thing.

When you've got two people who you know are friends

and who you know like each other

and who you know delight in making each other laugh,

then it's something you can't fake.

Let's see how many of our 100 people said Podgorica.

Despite the clear rapport between Alexander and Richard,

in the early days, no-one knew if the show would be a success.

Oh, it's a pointless!

I told Xander from episode one Pointless wouldn't be a hit

because I've made so many shows over the years

and most shows aren't hits. It's very difficult.

Every time you get a hit, you're very blessed.

He would go, because Xander is enthusiastic about EVERYTHING,

he's like a big puppy dog.

Literally, everything he ever does, he thinks will be brilliant,

which is such a nice way to live life.

I mean, deluded, but nice.

He would say, "No, I think this is going to run for ever,

"I think we'll end up doing 500 of these."

Now we've ended up doing 1,200 of these,

and a bit of me is annoyed that he was right.

I've got pastries, I've got tea. Would you like a cup of tea?

Oh, I really would. That's just what I need.

There you go. That's nice, isn't it?

Isn't it?

The audience quickly warmed to

the awkward charm of Alexander and Richard,

and the show became a hit.

We started very small,

hidden away in the afternoon schedules on BBC Two.

Now we get to do it on BBC One before the news.

I mean, it's the most absurd privilege to have that slot.

How many times a day does somebody come to you and go,

"You're... It's Pointless, isn't it?!"

Um... That's...

Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot of times.

It's nice. It means I have...

People get a nice surprise, I think, when they see someone...

Sometimes they think they know you. This happens quite a lot.

I've done that many a time before when it's somebody who I think,

"Oh, I definitely know them. Who's that?"

"We know them." And it's not.

-It's Robert De Niro.

-Yeah, it's Robert De Niro.

I'm always on the train with him after Marylebone(!)

Because we film Pointless in such a lovely environment,

Richard and I are so completely and entirely ourselves on that show.

So it's quite nice in a way.

It does mean that people feel they know me quite well,

and they genuinely probably do.

Today, Pointless has become a national institution.

I confidently predict it's going to be a cracking show today.

I think so.

And now it means so much to people.

My father - he's 92 - he loves it! It's a point in the day.

Students love it.

Something to eat their breakfast with!

But I understand that students do drinking games to it.

I believe they do.

I think every time I say, "Thank you very much indeed,"

or something like that.

Something I say all the time.

It's terrible, the awful grooves you find yourself going up.

When you're doing something so many times,

even if I thought of another way of saying,

"Could the second players now please stand up to the podium?"

there's only a limit,

there's only about five ways you can really say that.

Xander and I are often given presents by people, which is lovely.

The thing I most encourage is cake.

-Oh...

-Very...impressive.

-Wow.

-Look at that.

-APPLAUSE

People bring us some unusual things, shall we say.

I'm retired now, but I do a lot of knitting,

and I've brought you a present.

-Oh, have you?

-Yes.

You do get a lot of presents on the show.

-It's nice.

-It is nice.

-It's nice.

-Poems, knitted animals...

-Knitted things.

We've had knitted versions,

Richard and I have had knitted versions of ourselves given.

Oooooh, look at that!

APPLAUSE

They're to scale as well.

We had lovely knitted dolls on one show.

People had knitted things that looked a tiny bit voodoo doll-ish -

I'm going to be honest,

but they were cute, and we had a little pretend fight with those.

-Buh-chuh!

-Urgh!

-Boom!

-Guh!

-Ugh!

Get off my desk!

-And you keep them?

-We do.

Not in here?

No, interestingly, perhaps not in here.

I still have my knitted doll at home, which is rather lovely.

Over the last few years, the gentle charm of Pointless

has come to mean something very special to its viewers.

For one of those viewers,

it would come to mean something more than just entertainment.

In July 2015, Pooja Raja woke one morning

to find she had no feeling from the waist down.

I had emergency surgery on my spine,

and after a long investigation,

it turned out I had a really rare tumour.

It was difficult waiting, not knowing what was wrong with me

and also, just going through the motions of the daily routine.

Like, I couldn't lift things,

or I could walk for five minutes and then I'd be in pain.

During that time, Pointless meant a lot to me.

It played a part in my routine,

and I looked forward to 5:15 every day.

I'd play around with my physio times

so I could be sat on the sofa at 5:15.

When you're on at daytime, at 5:15,

you do become part of people's lives, is the truth.

Especially if you are less mobile,

especially if there are reasons

why the television is very important to you,

and I think you become part of people's routine,

which is incredibly special.

I think that if you do a show for people that they like at that point

and if they like you, there's a very, very powerful bond.

Eventually, Pooja made a full recovery,

and in September this year,

she was able to be a member of the Pointless studio audience.

Being in the audience, it meant a lot,

just cos of what I'd been through last year.

The amount of people who come up to us on the street

and say that it's important in their day

or in their parents' day or people have been convalescing

or people who have just had a baby - all sorts of things -

just say, "It's very important to me to be able to sit down,

"have a cup of tea and watch that show."

We both take that unbelievably seriously.

Across the country, there are many viewers for whom the show

has taken on great importance.

Amongst them was one of Alexander's childhood idols.

During the last few years of his life,

the legendary record producer Sir George Martin

would always make a point of watching Pointless.

George Martin, who, of course, the Beatles and...he was so very ill

and he loved Pointless, and it got him through his final illness.

I mean, there's a beautiful sort of cyclical thing here.

George Martin was behind so many things I adored.

I mean, obviously the Beatles.

I mean, the Beatles... I became obsessed with the Beatles

from the age of about seven, I should think.

But he'd also done so many comedy things as well.

He'd done lots of The Goons, Peter Sellers things later.

He'd done lots of Beyond The Fringe stuff

with Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett.

I have sort of love for George Martin.

I mean, huge love for George Martin.

Respect, admiration, all of those sorts of things,

as this sort of ethereal figure.

Not someone who really even lived in the same world,

I always...I rather felt.

And then, after he died, I got an e-mail from Giles, his son,

saying, "Dad was a big fan,

"And it would mean a lot to him if you read at his memorial service".

And I just...

-I mean...the honour of that.

-Wow.

-I mean, just wonderful, I mean, extraordinary.

-What did you read?

I actually did a Beyond The Fringe.

There's a really lovely Beyond The Fringe.

It was Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook.

Perkins, sorry to drag you away from the fun, old boy.

That's all right, sir.

-War's not going very well, you know.

-Oh, my God.

"We need somebody to pep up the war effort.

"What we need at this stage of the war is a futile gesture."

-Perkins.

-Sir.

-I want you to lay down your life.

-Yes, sir.

We need a futile gesture at this stage.

"So what I want you to do is, basically, get on your plane,

"pop over to Bremen, don't come back."

That's basically, just what we need at this stage of the war!

He had a very good, quirky, dark sense of humour,

and that really, really appealed to him.

Oh, it was lovely. I mean, it was extraordinary.

It was like suddenly being invited into one of your dreams.

Isn't it extraordinary - a piece of work that you thought

might just pay a few bills for 30 programmes

-has now brought you these untold gifts.

-Extraordinary.

We've been told that the Queen watches it - I love that.

-Did you know that?

-Does she?

-Yes!

Well, I don't know.

All we know is that the music to Pointless

is heard down her, down the little passage.

Oh, she'd be very good at the royal family rounds, wouldn't she?

You've got to hope she'd be.

I imagine she's probably very good at flags, capital cities.

-Yes, yes. Anything to do with...

-Horse racing.

-..the Commonwealth.

Very good. Anything to do with the Commonwealth.

-Nailing every single one of those, I should think.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

You should get her on.

I think she and Phil, come on together.

-Have you asked them?

-We haven't yet. I mean, that's probably

the only reason they haven't come on, I should think.

Through the success of Pointless,

Alexander had found fame and adoration.

But there was a part of him that was still not fulfilled.

His passion for his first love, music, had refused to go away.

# Deck the halls with boughs of holly. #

He knows that he's an amazing singer,

and it really is his sort of... it's his biggest talent, really.

And I think he's always been itching to show it off.

I know singing's very important to Xander.

It's a very big part of his life, and always has been.

I know that he's always singing at weddings,

and when I got married to his sister-in-law,

we didn't ask Xander to sing at our wedding, cos we thought it'd be nice

for him to get to go to a wedding where he didn't have to sing.

And then afterwards, I sort of heard on the grapevine

he was a bit offended we hadn't asked him to sing.

Cos I think if he goes to some big spiritual event, he likes to sing,

to sort of connect with it.

I think he spent most of his comedy career, if he's honest,

trying to find ways to turn his comedy career and his acting career

into a singing career.

Xander's singing is incredibly important to him.

It's where everything began,

with being a choir boy and a choral scholar,

it's the first time that people sort of looked and listened to him

and enjoyed it, and he enjoyed them enjoying him.

From there comes acting, comedy, and all those things.

So it's a lovely way of things coming full circle now

that people want to hear him sing.

And because he'd become very famous,

he had a sort of built-in fan base ready to sing to.

# When true lovers meet in Mayfair

# So the legends tell... #

In 2015, Alexander decided it was finally time

to give his singing career a chance.

It was only last year when I started singing properly again,

that I remembered, I remembered the pain of not singing any more.

# There were angels dining

# At The Ritz... #

Last Christmas, Alexander's first album topped the charts,

and he's hoping to do the same this year with his new album.

Honestly, I can see in his eyes it's the thing that he really loves,

and it's lovely when you see

a friend and someone you like and respect

doing the thing they really love, and he does.

# Are you going to Scarborough Fair? #

The latest album has been absolutely all-consuming.

He's worked incredibly hard.

I'm so proud of him.

He really has taken the bull by the horns.

# ..the one who lives there

# She once was a true love of mine. #

But now, AT LAST, you said that last year

you were able to use your voice properly again,

professionally again.

You had an album that topped the charts

-over this period, the Christmas period.

-Yeah, yeah.

And this year, you've done it again.

Yes.

The latest album not only demonstrates his vocal talent,

but it also reflects Alexander's faith.

CHOIR SINGS

It's title is inspired by

the annual carol service from King's College, Cambridge,

and comes from a prayer about the Christian belief

that death is not the end.

We've called that album, we've called it Upon A Different Shore,

Upon A Different Shore, but it comes from...

I mean, that's a line that comes from the Bidding prayer

of the King's carols.

And it was written by Eric Milner-White in the 1920s.

So when the Great War was still...

only...I mean, so fresh in everyone's lives.

Let us too remember all those whom we have loved, but see no longer.

Those whose lives have influenced and enriched our own,

and who now rejoice with us, but on another shore

and with a greater understanding.

It's just so beautifully put.

"Those who rejoice with us,

"but upon another shore and in a greater light",

and that's one of those prayers that,

every time I hear it, I just think...

-HE CHUCKLES

-"That's...that's just lovely."

Just something that moves me profoundly.

And it's doing it right now.

I can't even say it.

Even talking about it brings tears to my eyes.

# I never made promises lightly

# And there have been some that I've broken... #

And, listen, I rib him mercilessly about it,

about the song choices and the kind of music he does,

and all that kind of stuff,

and I will never stop ribbing him about it,

but I'm incredibly proud of what he's done.

It makes you very happy to see how happy it makes him, as well.

Over the last 20 years, Alexander has graced our living rooms

with his comedy acting, presenting and now singing.

It almost feels like he's an old friend.

But what do those closest to him make of him?

He's a proper toff.

But he's also...one of the most down-to-earth people I've ever met.

If I had to sum up Xander,

I would say he's like a sort of lovely, enthusiastic puppy dog,

who had the immense good fortune

to be brought up on a lovely, big, open farm,

full of other animals who he got on with.

And he is genuinely hilarious.

He's a very funny man, he's a very kind man,

he makes me laugh more than anybody.

And, you know, when you're going through

bringing up children and life in general,

having a funny soulmate is a real gift.

I'm aware he has a faith,

I'm aware he has a way of looking at the world.

He wants people to be happy, he wants there to be justice,

you know, he wants the world to be a more equitable place.

His beliefs come from kindness,

and anyone whose beliefs come from kindness -

I don't care what faith they are or lack of faith they are -

you know, those are my people.

He's a very genuine person, a lovely person to be around.

There are some people in life, when you meet,

you think this feels a little costly,

and there are other people who are very generous in the way they are,

and it's always good to be in his company.

He is like Mr Fezziwig in Dickens's Christmas Carol,

the guy who throws the biggest, best Christmas party.

In fact, he's probably the Ghost Of Christmas Present, Xander.

He is a guy who just wants to make

everything lovely as possible for everyone else,

and if everyone else is happy, then Xander is happy.

And I don't think you could have a better quality.

And now Christmas, here we are. What Christmas means to you...?

Christmas. Well, you won't be surprised to hear that

Christmas is about music,

from about the second week of Advent on.

I think the Messiah, the Christmas Oratorio,

there are various other Bach cantatas as well

that I always think of as being especially Christmassy.

In fact, you know, as autumn comes in

and the nights start to draw in a bit,

I always get very excited about

the, not just the music of Christmas,

the smells of Christmas I love.

-Big on presents?

-Yes.

We try and drip feed the presents in.

Otherwise you get this terrifying sort of "BOOM"

with presents on Christmas Day,

and the children literally just running around, going,

"Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Throw away. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Throw away."

Well, we thought we'd bring you something,

-and this is because we know that on Pointless...

-Yes.

..people do knit you marvellous Richards and Xanders,

which I know when you find them, you will put in here.

This is something that you might like to go with them.

How in...credi...

-Oh, look at that!

-Yes.

Look! And it's been sort of wrapped up with a...

That could even hang on a tree, Fern, is what I'm thinking.

-Yes, it's a knitted llama.

-It's a knitted llama!

And I'm so sorry, I will send a Christmas hat.

I just didn't manage to have time to knit him a little hat.

That's just... You didn't knit that, did you?

-No!

-No, I was going to say!

"I just didn't have time to knit you the hat".

But look at that!

I think that's...lovely.

This is closer than I've ever been allowed to get to a llama.

-Yes.

-Llamas are generally...

they're lovely up to a distance of about six feet,

and then they're a little bit...

-a little bit spitty.

-But that's the fun of them.

Oh, how lovely! Thank you very, very much indeed.

It's been lovely talking to you.

-Great pleasure.

-Thank you very much indeed.

Good luck with the album, and happy Christmas.

And to you! Happy Christmas!

Well, Alexander's just gone off to make me a cup of tea,

which is very nice of him.

I'm sitting here in this gorgeous home,

and I've just found his BAFTA -

he doesn't mention that, that was just hidden away.

That's for Armstrong And Miller.

What a lovely man he is.

Very sincere, very straightforward,

and a kind of dashing 1950s hero.

He's lovely, isn't he?

And he makes a really good cup of tea.

Next week, I meet boxing legend Nigel Benn.

He talks about his troubled teens, following a family tragedy.

I just changed, something in my heart was severed.

How success opened up a world of womanising and drugs,

which ended in an attempted suicide.

I don't know if I wanted to die.

I think I just wanted to sort of say, "You know what?

"You're going to be all right."

And how a belief in God has turned his life around.

And so I stand close to him.

Once I'm close to him... I can't go wrong.

-ALEXANDER:

-# Snow had fallen snow on snow

# Snow on snow

# In the bleak midwinter

# Long ago. #