Daniel Rigby: ‘Victoria Wood and I would watch MasterChef and heckle Gregg Wallace’

The ‘Flowers’ and ‘Eric and Ernie’ actor tells Ellie Harrison about sending up the police in the revival of ‘Accidental Death of an Anarchist’, his bizarre run-in with the authorities, and his memories of living with the late comedy legend Victoria Wood

Daniel Rigby’s anti-police play will leave audiences entertained and enraged (Faye Thomas)

A couple of months ago, the actor Daniel Rigby was questioned by the police about a murder. The Bafta-winning star of stage and screen was on the way to Italy to film a new project when five armed officers accosted him at Heathrow airport. “Honestly, my body turned to jelly,” he tells me, leaning forward across the table. “They asked for all of my personal details, to see my phone, what I was doing in Italy, the plot of the film, the scene I was in... it was just so weird and terrifying.”

The police had received a tip-off from the concerned driver who had dropped Rigby off, who had overheard him in the back of the car talking about a killing. Little did they know, the actor was simply going over his lines. But at least Rigby can see the funny side – he weeps with laughter as he relays the anecdote. “I was very shaken up because they had guns!” he says, still incredulous.

The timing of this encounter couldn’t have been stranger. It was two days after Rigby had finished performing in Accidental Death of an Anarchist, a ferocious farce on the British police, at the Lyric Hammersmith. Tom Basden’s revival of Italian playwright Dario Fo’s 1970 play – which has transferred to the West End’s Royal Haymarket after two sold-out runs in Sheffield and Hammersmith – gives the classic a contemporary twist, with its biting, bombastic takedown of the force.