My divorce has been emotionally damaging... but GREAT for my comedy

Hal Cruttenden was a jobbing actor until stand-up stole his heart. Now, ahead of playing Winston Churchill in a new film about the creation of the NHS, he's starring in an Edinburgh Fringe show about middle-aged dating and life after separation

- By Margaret Hussey

AS ONE of the most familiar faces on the British comedy stage and screen, Hal Cruttenden jokes he was “very offended” when approached to play Winston Churchill. “I thought ‘I’m not that fat’, my face might be! And he was 69 and I’m in my 50s!”

That face has seen him appearing on everything from Mock the Week to Live at the Apollo, Would I Lie to You? to Have I Got News For You.

Yet Hal started out as an actor and in the new film The Man With The Plan he plays Churchill around the time of the hugely influential Beveridge Report of 1942. It set the groundwork for today’s welfare state and the creation of the NHS.

“I’m not your first choice as Winston Churchill,” admits Hal, 55. “But it was very good fun to do. It’s about the debates in the House of Commons following the report, with Churchill being very anti [the report].”

Churchill warned against imposing “great new expenditure on the state”, while the report was popular with the public.

“I worked very hard on the voice but I didn’t want it to be an impression,” says Hal. “That would almost be distracting.”

The film, starring Simon Callow as Liberal MP Beveridge and slated for release later this year, is based entirely on documented texts and speeches from the time.

It was a welcome return to acting for former Central School of Speech and Drama graduate Hal who, before becoming a stand-up comic, had appeared in television and film roles including EastEnders, Kavanagh QC and Shackleton about the famous explorer’s life.

“For ages I saw myself as an actor who did comedy,” he says. “I then realised more and more ‘No, you are definitely a stand-up comedian’.

“I was struggling as an actor and was working at the BBC doing traffic reports and somebody in my office was doing a stand-up comedy course and that was the reason I went along.”