My Festival: Mike McShane: 'When I stay at people’s houses I go through their cheese selections'

I’m evil, I’m wearing an eyepatch, holding a stuffed Persian cat and using vocal production at a level only dogs can hear. They actually tell you in a warning at the Pleasance. Not unlike a Brian Blessed Installation Announcement in West End theatres. So come and be blessed at a competitive rate!

What will we learn from your show that we didn’t know before?

The Spy Who Went To Rehab juggles the cliches of 12-step programmes and their participants, with an understanding and respect for its actual effectiveness. You may learn something about yourself, Western male fantasy culture, and the influence of Architectural Digest in supervillains’ lairs and lives.

Who or what was the biggest inspiration for your show?

Michael Lonsdale, Max Von Sydow, Divine and the playwright, Gregg Ostrin.

What’s the best review you’ve ever had, and the worst?

Best was on Loose Ends after Ned Sherrin asked me to perform the “Plump Jack” speech from Henry IV, Part I, with Timothy West sitting across the table from me. When I finished, I dared to cast a glance at Mr West; he gave me a slight smile and nod. I was very grateful for it. Worst? I toured a production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest with Isla Blair and Danny Webb. I was playing Chief Bromden. One of the cast members invited me to have an early tea with his friend before our show, all very nice, with chips.

Then a review of the show came out a couple days later which the critic chose to pick me out for scorn, saying that I looked like Haystack Calhoun and had none of the bearing of the “Noble Savage”. The critic was the cast member’s friend who I’d had tea with.

It struck me, even as I had been told years before by an actor wiser than me: “Believe none of them, take none to heart; you’ve got work to do.” Also that it was lazy writing, made of the 19th century romantic pulp cliches that are like little Home County eyemasks for people of that man’s generation. I wish I could have dragged him in front of my birth mother, a full blooded Ojibwe woman from Garden River in Canada. I bet she would have set his pink arse straight. Apparently, from other relatives, she was an Indigenous version of Janey Godley.

Who or what are you most excited about seeing this year?

My neighbour in the States is a Scottish fellow named Colin Cox, and he has a show at the C Venues, called Not Without Right: Shakespeare’s Secrets. Then John Hegley every year if he’s there, he’s sharp, kind and welcoming in his own very sweet way; Showstoppers, just to remind me that your culture gave an Olivier to a group of improvisors, and see it as a viable artistic form. We still have trouble with that in America, but we’re trying. I also just walk into anything if where I’m going to is sold out. I’m a big believer in another line from Henry IV Part I, when Prince Hal says: “And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.”

Who do you most like spending time with in Edinburgh?

My friend Anne Marie. She works for the NHS, and as my birth mother was a healthcare worker and the mother who raised me a nurse, I have a lot of respect for those who do all the jobs that keep us out of pain and fear of poverty from illness, and the challenges they have with the governments of our respective countries. She’s brash, smart and full of heart. And her mother, now gone, tripped and fell on me, knocked me over, and we rolled down York Street in the rain for about five car lengths, laughing and screaming like chimps. That didn’t take her out; she lived for many more years after that; but this is a hearty family.

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Tell us something about you that would surprise people.

When I stay at people’s houses, I open their fridge and go through their cheese selection; then use that to judge their morals and ethics.

What are the best and worst things that have happened to you at a festival?

Best: the Dagda Bar on Buccleuch Street has been a continual favourite for adventure, and intelligent drunken discourse; one night I was sitting there nursing an ale and this guy with an intense face and Ben Turpin moustache was just staring at me, sipping his beer. He came over to me and said his name was Nick. We started talking and he was a veteran, Falklands, as I recall. I’m a veteran too, so I’ll always have time for this. He said would I like to come back over to his place. I was feeling warm and jolly, so why not! We stepped out of the bar, walked directly across the street standing in front of an 18th century building, which was the Archers Hall, the clubhouse of the Royal Company of Archers, whom have served as the Royal Family’s bodyguard in Scotland since the early 19th century. We entered from the side as he was the caretaker of the building along with his wife, June. He explained its origins as he poured. I was overwhelmed with his hospitality and the place’s history. It was 3am when I rolled home, blazing and wide awake with the wonder of the martial spectacle and building itself. I always looked them up when I was here. He’s gone now, I found out last year, as well as June. But they were great people.

Worst? Again, long ago, and incredibly early in the morning, I staggered out of the now closed Cannon Mill Bakery, mangling a fresh sausage roll, trying not to cauterise my mouth or paint myself with grease. I crossed over the South Bridge, and cut a left down the Royal Mile to my digs. It was pretty quiet, last week of Festival quiet, and among the broken glass and mangled flyers there was a dead seagull lying on the cobblestones amongst it all. I stopped and had a moment of mortal showbiz contemplation, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw three other seagulls eyeing me; and the thought suddenly seized me; they thought I’d killed their trash brother. I started walking down past the World’s End – they followed, occasionally letting out a sharp cry, and hoisting their wings in a gunslingers’ feint. I picked up speed, they matched me. I was now in full run, like a greasy, drunken sausage-scented Tippi Hedren, and cut sharply into a close and into my flat. breathless, knowing I’d just escaped a deadly Full Scottish Peckfest.

What’s the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night?

I say good morning to those have gone before me, and hope they will help me that day. At night, after I read for an hour, I close my eyes and I imagine I’m walking off a field after a good game, and I thank everyone I played with, my friends, my ancestors, and those I’ve hurt, I ask them for forgiveness.

Thanks for the interview! We’d like to buy you a drink. Where are we going and what are we drinking?

The Dagda Bar and a session ale is fine, thank you very much.

The Spy Who Went To Rehab, Pleasance Dome, 12.10pm, until 25 August. Mike McShane also features in Paul Merton and Suki Webster’s Improv Show, Pleasance Courtyard, 3.30pm, until 17 August.

READ MORE: Paul Merton and Suki Webster’s Improv Show review - 'the audience know exactly what's required'