Mangan was born in Enfield, north London, and won a scholarship to Haileybury school in Hertfordshire before reading law at Cambridge University. He graduated from Rada in 1994 and began his career in the theatre, which included a stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakthrough TV role came in 2001 as the title character in Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years. Other credits include Green Wing, Episodes and The Split. He also presents a show on Classic FM and writes children’s books, illustrated by his sister, Anita. He lives in north London with his wife, the actress Louise Delamere, and their sons Harry, 16, Frank, 13, and Jack, 8.
If I’m filming, I’ll slip out of the house at 5.30am and try hard not to eat the on-set English breakfast. If I’m not filming, I wake at 7 and it’s always a great shame to get out of bed. I’m not one of those people who jump up and kung-fu kick their way through the morning.
Our two teenagers won’t get out of bed without some heavy artillery but our youngest is up at the crack of dawn. He will already have been downstairs for two hours watching old episodes of American sitcoms, but definitely not anything I’ve been in. No one in this house is remotely interested in anything I’ve done. Even my wife.
Breakfast is chaotic — it’s a challenge to get food into the boys that won’t trigger a sugar rollercoaster. I don’t eat until they’re out of the house. Then I have a massive bowl of Greek yoghurt, fruit and granola.
Louise has turned my diet round over the years, but I am also living in the long shadow of my mum dying of bowel cancer when she was 45 and my uncle dying from the same disease. Not only do I have a camera shoved up there every two or three years, but I eat stuff that will help keep everything healthy in that area.
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I’m also big on exercise now. Running is about as good as it gets for me. It’s my happy place and it fills me with joy. Whatever it does for me, I’m just pleased it’s that and not heroin, although running can feel like a religious experience. I remember running up this big hill one morning when I was promoting a book at the Hay Festival a couple of years ago and just experiencing this feeling of sudden ecstasy. For about eight minutes I was taken to a completely different place.
If I’m not filming, I’ll do the school run. Because I live in quite a “media” part of north London, the school gates are a bit like an Equity meeting. No one is at all bothered by the fact that I’ve been on the telly as there are much more famous people around than me.
I’m savouring the fact that my youngest still wants to hold my hand on the walk to school — that little hot hand fills me with joy. Because I do such a range of things, I think my sons are confused about what I do for a living. But then, so am I.
At home I cook lunch myself — probably just soup or beans on toast. I write on the fifth floor of a very narrow house and the kitchen is on the bottom floor, so I start my day by taking a tray of coffee and snacks up with me and my routine is to write five words, eat something, write five words, eat something, repeat.
Reflection is not really part of my day as I’m too busy — a state I’ve deliberately constructed. I like to say yes to things that intrigue me and it’s great to still be finding things that I haven’t done before, so I don’t really indulge myself by looking back.
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If I’m not on set I’ll collect our youngest, then take the older two to various after-school clubs. We eat at about 6pm and, if I could, I’d go to bed by 8. But Louise thinks it’s rude of me to disappear so early so, instead, once or twice a week I’ll go to the theatre. I like seeing plays with friends in, as we’ll usually go out for a meal afterwards.
Whether I’ve been in or out, by the time it gets to bedtime I am shattered and will fall asleep in seconds. I don’t have a comforting routine. Routines panic me — I enjoy not having any kind of predictability. I’ve always enjoyed the gamble of the uncertainty in my life.
The Day I Fell Down the Toilet by Stephen Mangan (Scholastic £7.99). To order, go to timesbookshop.co.uk
Words of wisdom
Best advice I was given
This too shall pass. Good or bad, it won’t last for ever
Advice I’d give
Work hard. Be on time. Don’t be a dick
What I wish I’d known
Everyone is just making it up as they go along
