BEING a star panellist on BBC2’s hit topical panel show Mock the Week and an actor in BBC1’s hit sitcom Outnumbered, Hugh Dennis began his performing career in 1985 as one half of double act Punt and Dennis, performing on Channel 4’s Saturday Live. He then teamed up with Jasper Carrott to appear on all three series of Carrott Confidential for BBC1. The Mary Whitehouse Experience on Radio One followed, winning the Sony Award for Best Comedy before transferring to BBC2. Hugh combined this with being a regular voice artist for Spitting Image, playing Dr Piers Crispin in six series of My Hero for BBC1, and being a guest presenter on Have I Got News For You. Hugh is also a regular voice on BBC’s radio network both writing and presenting Radio 4’s award winning comedy The Now Show, Radio 2’s It's Been a Bad Week and writing The Party Line for Radio 4 and BBC7.
What is your favourite training session?
This suggests I have a number of different training sessions in which I work on my speed, stamina, upper body, lower body etc. I don’t. I just run every day, quite slowly, on local bridleways and footpaths until I feel fit enough. It is a simple regime which would do me no good as an Olympic athlete, and Charles Van Commenee would probably have a harsh word or two with me, but it seems to work and will be just enough to prepare me for the 10-mile Bupa Great South Run this October, which I'll be running for the Alzheimer Society.
What is your least favourite training session?
There is a particularly steep hill near me which I run up and don’t like very much, but immediately after I have run up it I get to run down it again which is fantastic.
Who is your athletic hero/heroine?
Not a runner I’m afraid, but Lance Armstrong who beat cancer, won the Tour de France 7 times, retired, then took it all up again and finished third in this year’s event. Incredible.
What was your first race?
The 1987 Lakeland Marathon, which I assumed would be quite flat because it was around Derwentwater which being a lake has to be flat. It wasn’t flat at all. I should really have read the literature a bit more closely, which described it as the most gruelling course in the country.
What is your favourite race venue?
Blimey – again it’s not a running venue I’m afraid. I have cycled two stages of the Tour de France, and there is something fantastic about getting to the top of a col (mountain pass) in the Pyrenees having been able to see it rising above you for the previous two hours. So it would have to be there I guess. Although, I am sure from what I have heard about the Bupa Great South Run course that it will be added to my list of favorites after I complete it.
What sporting event would you most like to go to?
I am really looking forward to the Olympics in 2012, but most of all I would love to go to the soccer World Cup in South Africa next year. It is a beautiful country and I think England may have a genuine chance – but then we say that every time: Oh and not forgetting the Bupa Great South Run in Portsmouth of course!
If you weren’t an actor, what career path do you think you would have taken?
I almost wasn’t an actor and almost did have a completely different path in marketing. I worked for a multi-national called Unilever and I was in charge of UK fragrances. I didn’t go full-time in comedy until I was 27.
What is your greatest running achievement?
Since the Lakeland Marathon it has been never missing a bus I wanted to catch.
What other interests do you have?
I’m a boy – so football mainly. Reading. And being nice to my family.
In the hours leading up to a race, how do you prepare?
As the Bupa Great South Run is a significant 10 miles, I will probably do what I always do and get nervous, show a distinct inability to tie my trainers up quite the way I want them, and then just before I have to leave the house lose my house keys.