Off Pat

Living in France with his wife and kids. Would have been a chef if he hadn’t turned to acting. Came from the wrong side of town but was saved by Shakespeare.

Now in a one-man show which he wrote, directs and stars in and which premieres in Oxford with the potential to go national. Busy then.

And while that’s him in a nutshell, we can’t leave it there, because Paterson is far too interesting and has far too much to say to compartmentalise.

He says that living in France doesn’t seem to have made a difference to his career, apart from perhaps making him more choosy. “But it’s a lifestyle choice. I wanted to slow down and spend more time with my wife and kids. And there’s not an Englishman in sight.”

He obviously relishes the anonymity, and admits that his fans can be “very enthusiastic”, especially Peep Show fanatics. Which brings us neatly round to his enormous body of work. Peep Show is about to enter its eighth series, and has made Paterson a household name as Johnson, or The Johnson as he’s been tagged.

But I’m getting ahead of myself because his original debut came opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Hollywood blockbuster The Beach.

“That was just a great job in a great place,” Paterson remembers. “We were in Thailand for four months which was a wonderful training ground for a great part in an international film. But even then I was old and ugly enough to know that these things can be a vacuum and while some doors open others don’t. So when I was on breakfast TV recently and they announced me as a Hollywood actor, I thought ‘I live in France for a start and that kind of career never materialised’.”

Not that Paterson seems to mind. Perhaps it’s because he’s so delighted to be acting anyway. After all, growing up in Willesden Green, the son of a plasterer and a cleaner, he left school at 15 having “barely” attended for years, and had no idea what to do with his life.

He drifted into catering, and got a job as a hospital chef but was “disgusted by the hygiene issues” so joined the local youth group.

“If I’d got a placement in a really good restaurant or hotel I probably would have carried on with chefing,” he muses, “because acting was the last thing in the world I thought would happen, being an astronaut was as likely then. But I had an instant reaction to it. I knew immediately I had found my niche. It was magical.”

Most recently you may have seen him on TV in The No1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Survivors, Sweet Delta, Boy Meets Girl, a documentary about Harlesden youth doing Shakespeare, and Blood and Oil.

“It’s ended up that I’ve had a British career rather than an American one,” Paterson shrugs. “And I’ve been making all sorts of programmes, funny ones like Peep Show, which we thought would be a one-hit wonder until the students got hold of it, and ones with integrity like Blood and Oil which was politically a real hot potato, so it’s been a good mix of comedy and drama.”

Sancho is his new baby though.

A project that’s just been given the green light, it’s co-produced by the Oxford Playhouse, and after its stint at the BTT is set to tour the country.

It depicts Charles Ignatius Sancho, born on a slave ship in 1729, who became a famous entertainer and the first black African to vote in Britain.

“Sancho still resonates today for anyone who comes to England and feels as if they don’t belong,” Paterson tells me, “and yet Sancho never showed any bitterness but instead used wit, music and plays to say ‘I’m here and I’m British’.”

“Besides, I always wanted to be in a costume drama, and now, aged 47, I get to be in one,” he says and then laughs “although I remember my sisters saying ‘don’t go into acting, you’ll just play butlers and slaves’, which is what Sancho is all about, so I guess they were right all along."

The World Premiere of Sancho: An Act of Remembrance, performed by Paterson Joseph opend on Wednesday at the Burton Taylor Studio. Call the box office on 01865 305 305.