Charlie Higson is best known for playing a host of memorable characters in The Fast Show as well as being the author of numerous children’s books, including Young Bond and the Enemy series. He has recently written a new book for children called Worst. Holiday. Ever, which takes some of its inspiration from his own experiences of a memorable school French exchange programme - including a surprisingly philosophical conversation with his exchange partner’s father.

He recalls some memories from that time - including his favourite teacher and performing in school plays - and reveals whether anyone from that period inspired characters in The Fast Show.

1. Where did you go to primary school?

I went to a classic prep school - a prep school of the old school, of which there were quite a lot more around in those days. It was like something out of Evelyn Waugh, like Decline and Fall. It was full of these crusty old teachers who’d been there forever. And they all taught one subject. Looking back, I can hardly believe that was actually my life.

2. Did you enjoy it?

I had fun there but I left when I was 11. Classically, in the prep school set-up, you stay until you’re 13 but I missed out on that because, on the strength of my 11-plus, I got a scholarship to another school. So I slightly missed out on those last two years, where you get to be the oldest kids in the school and you can swan about the place as Lord High and Mighty.

And I think that’s an interesting system that is different to the primary school in the state school system, which you leave when you’re 11. Maybe that is part of this sense of confidence that a lot of people who’ve gone through the private school system have is that, from 12 to 13, they’ve been the big kids; they’ve been in charge [at that age].

3. Any memorable teachers there?

There was a young teacher. He did drama and got us to do all sorts of improvisations, and play games in the classroom and pretend to be pirates, and I do remember that as being a huge amount of fun. Maybe that gave me a taste for performing and drama.

4. Where did you go to secondary school?

I went to Sevenoaks School in Kent and I had a great time. I really loved it. And I got a huge amount out of it. It was an amazing school and still is.

5. Were you a popular pupil?

I’ve always been quite shy and I was always slightly away from the mainstream, so I had a smaller but more diverse - and stranger - friendship group.

I suppose I didn’t join in with the mainstream in the group activities there. I think, as a shy person, you do that and it can turn you a little bit snobbish, which I probably was in terms of refusing to listen to pop music and things like that. I didn’t think of myself as a cool kid.

6. Was there a teacher there that you remember fondly?

The main teacher who had the biggest influence on me there, and on my life, was the art teacher, Bob White.

The school had a fantastic art department, which he ran, and it was the classic art department, where you would hang out there between lessons and after school. There was a record player and the older kids would put albums on - it being the 1960s, there was a lot of Bob Dylan.

The main thing was that I probably learned more in the art department under Bob White than in any other lesson. What he taught kids to do was to think, to look at the world to see what it was and what was going on, and how to reinterpret that through art.

A lot of his lessons were talking about philosophy and science, and loads of other things and - in terms of developing my brain, and my way of looking at the world and thinking about the world - those lessons were absolutely fundamental for me.

7. Did you ever go back and meet him again?

I did go back. I think it may well have been his leaving do many years later. I don’t think he remembered me but, at the time, as I say, I was a shy kid - I wasn’t one of the kids pushing themselves to the front.

But you know, that didn’t matter. I did tell him how important he’d been and there were a lot of kids doing the same - he was an amazing guy.

8. You’ve written a new book, called Worst. Holiday. Ever, about a young boy going on holiday with a friend’s family - was that inspired by any school trips?

I did the classic French exchange trip, where a French kid came to stay with us and then I went to his school in France - I think it was for three or four weeks.

We boarded at his school in the week and then stayed with his parents in Paris at the weekend. And that was an extraordinary growing up process for me - to be away from home and to go to a French school for four weeks and do all your lessons in French. I did take a couple of things from that [for the book]. His family were quite a bohemian Parisian family with a very arty apartment right in the centre of Paris. We’d go out and have all the French meals - snails and frogs legs and everything.

And I once had a long conversation with the father, who was a very arty type with long hair, who took me up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe as he was showing me around Paris.

It was very windy and he said: “Do you like the wind?” I really didn’t know what to say. I mean, what kid likes the wind? And he went into a big, long philosophical thing about the wind, which I put in my book because, actually, even though I don’t like the wind, the idea of having a philosophical conversation with an adult at the age of 13, who’s treating you almost like an adult, was a good experience.

9. Did you do much acting or performing while at school?

When I was at school, the big thing for my generation was, of course, Monty Python. So you would avidly watch that and then try to remember it all so you could sort of try to recreate it the next day at school, and go through the sketches and the characters.

Inspired by that, me and a friend - who was also a huge Monty Python fan - started putting on plays at the school and trying to be as shocking as possible. That really got me into performing and writing and creating - and that thrill you get from performing in front of people and making them laugh is quite an extraordinary thing.

And that’s why sketch shows are very useful for kids because it’s very easy to do the sketches the next day. As long as you can do the catchphrase and some approximation of a voice, everyone knows what you’re doing and what it is.

It’s a shame that there hasn’t been, in the past few years, a new sketch show that the family can watch and the kids can “do” the next day.

10. Were any of the Fast Show characters based on teachers?

No, I don’t think any teachers ended up in The Fast Show. Paul Whitehouse and myself work very well together and we both get inspiration from different places. Paul tends to base characters, at least to start with, on people he knows or people he’s met; I tend to come from a more theoretical angle of “what about a type of character who does this?” So, it’s combining those two ways of creating.

I don’t think I’ve ever done a character that was based on anyone I knew, other than, in some ways, Ralph (the aristocrat who was in love with his gardener). I could channel my teenage shyness and that’s really about me trying to talk to girls at discos.

Charlie Higson’s book, Worst. Holiday. Ever, is out now, published by Puffin. He was talking to Dan Worth, senior editor at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 30 April 2021 issue