Craig Charles

The Red Dwarf star answers your questions about The Promised Land and more

- DAVE GOLDER

FROM PERFORMANCE poet to live DJ via soap actor and Radio 2 presenter, Craig Charles has had a varied career, but for most people, he is indelibly linked to one role: Dave Lister in Red Dwarf. With this year’s 90-minute Red Dwarf special The Promised Land now available on various forms of shiny disc, we gave you the chance to ask him some questions. Here are the results.

What was the idea behind making The Promised Land a special?

Tyler Keyze

When people make specials from sitcoms they usually go down that route of not having an audience, like when we did Back To Earth. We wanted to see if we could do what was essentially a 90-minute feature film but do it like a sitcom, in front of a live audience. No one’s ever really done that before. We were all intrigued whether that would actually work. I was a bit worried whether it would maintain the audience’s attention, but apparently the viewing figures, which were great anyway, actually went up towards the end, so they must have been satisfied. We were all really pleased with the way it came out, actually. There are negotiations going on now that would mean we could possibly do two more 90-minute features.

What was your favourite part of Promised Land?

Abhay Singh