Alan Cumming: ‘The Traitors has been such a huge hit, it’s a testament to saying yes to things outside your comfort zone’

TV presenter and silver screen actor Alan Cumming chats with Rosie Morton about his new book, life in Scotland, and his beloved pooch Lala.

Tell me all about your new book, Victor & Barry’s Kelvinside Compendium.

It has been 40 years since Forbes [Masson] and I made up ‘Victor & Barry’. Which is a terrifying and monumental realisation. So, we thought it would be great to do a book [Victor & Barry’s Kelvinside Compendium]. We had great fun looking back through all our archives. We were in our early twenties and within a couple of years, Victor and Barry were huge stars in Scotland. The book’s about us looking back at our young selves as well as all this hilarious, ridiculous material that we did.

How did it feel when you were suddenly on TV and being recognised?

When things like that happen, it’s obviously a little overwhelming, but then it just becomes your life.

You can’t go around thinking ‘Ah, my life is crazy’ the whole time — it just becomes normal. And in a way that’s what happened to Forbes and I, it just became our norm quite quickly. But we were aware that the stakes kept getting higher and higher. Also, you know when you make something up, like a dinner or a cake? And you don’t think it’s very good — you just flung it together, and everybody thinks it’s delicious and goes nuts for it? It was kind of like that. We were just flinging this together, going round to each other’s flats after the pub and drunkenly making up these songs and sketches, then the whole of the country was loving it and it was on TV. It was a bit weird because it was like a sloppy cake and then all of a sudden everybody was buying the cake.

Since then you’ve played everything from Taggart‘s Jamie McCormack, to a James Bond villain. Have you always enjoyed playing the villain?

It’s not something I’ve always sought to do, but I do seek it now that I have played the villain quite a lot. Because it is a lot more fun — it has much better lines.

You have that ‘villain’ vibe in the reality TV show, The Traitors too?

Yes, I love that. I definitely milk the ‘James Bond baddie’ vibe in The Traitors. It’s so good because I am playing this character – it’s clearly not me, I do this funny accent – and it is such a huge character, and it is so hilarious to think that I am acting my socks off on a competition reality show.

It has just been a really great thing for me. We’ve had such a laugh and it has been such a huge hit. I think it’s also a testament to saying ‘yes’ to life and to say ‘yes’ to things that are outside your comfort zone and are a little weird. I’ve always said ‘yes’ to strange things.

Where does your wardrobe inspiration come from?

The Traitors’ stylist – Sam Spector – is great. This last season of the show was insane. It is hilarious that the fashion has become such a big part of the show and at my age I am like a fashion icon again. It’s just nuts. I love that it’s like panto – you wait to see what the dame’s going to wear the next time she comes on.

And your dog, Lala, gets in on the wardrobe action as well, doesn’t she?

Yes, there was an outcry of, ‘We need more Lala’ from the world. The internet spoke! So, she has little moments now. She is very good. She mostly sits in a basket looking gorgeous. The world wanted more Lala, and so they are getting more.

If you were to design a fashion line of your own, what would it be?

I think I would do pyjamas. The idea of wearing stuff that is basically pyjamas all day long is my dream.

I accidentally went to a film premier in a pair of pyjamas. Nobody noticed. I was in LA working and my friend said, ‘I’m having this screening tonight round the corner from you at the Writers Guild of America building’. I was just in my pyjamas – they were pretty cute grey pyjamas, it was a Communist leader sort of vibe. And so I walked round to this thing, and it was a huge premier. I was on telly and everything.

So, I would have a fashion line that was pyjamas that you could wear in different sorts of scenarios – like going for cocktails, so it could have a tie on it. I just think comfort and style and also sustainability would be the thing. Because fashion is lovely and we all have fun with it, but by its very definition it is not the most sustainable industry. So, I would like to try and help with that.

Where else do you take Lala? 

Lala goes everywhere. Recently, we took her to the Gordon Castle Highland Games and we entered Lala in the Best Rescue Dog Competition which she did not win. I think it was cruelly passed over. When I first got her, I shot a series for STV about the Outer Hebrides called Alan Cumming’s Edge of Scotland and we went on all the Hebridean islands and that was amazing. She was a beach dog in Costa Rica, so she loves the beach.

Where is your favourite Scottish location?

I really love that drive from Inverness to Ullapool. I’ve got this fascination with Ullapool. It’s easy to get to the islands. I think I romanticise the west coast a lot, but the east coast is so beautiful too.

This summer I am also making a film with Brian cox — that’s why I’m growing a beard — and we are shooting near Glasgow. But I am going to be around in the summer, and I’m also going to the Braemar Literary Festival. I am speaking at that, and I love up there — it is so lovely.

Also, I have a documentary coming out called Scotland’s Most Luxurious Railway, it’s about the Royal Scotsman Train. That’s great because I adore the Royal Scotsman Train. I have been on it twice with my husband and paid as a real person to go on it! And then I got asked to host this series where I go on the train and get off and go and do certain things at different places.

I did amazing things, I went to Iona. I had a longed to go Iona since I was a little boy. My brother went on there with the Scouts and he came back and was like, ‘Ohhh, it’s this magical place’ and I have always mythologised about it. I went there and we couldn’t land because the seas were too rough and that made it even more exciting.

And what is lovely about that train is that you pull up at little stations like the Bridge of Orchy, then you stay the night on the train and have this delicious dinner, then somebody comes out with a fiddle and you do Highland dancing on the platform. Actually we did Highland dancing at Dundee station which was so funny because there’s the train going to Edinburgh and you could see people looking at us thinking, ‘What is going on?’ My mum came to that, that was really fun.

Where in Scotland is home for you? 

I get adopted as Aberfeldy’s son, but I was literally just born there. We lived in Dunkeld and moved away quite quickly after that. I grew up in Angus and went to Carnoustie High School. I grew up in the countryside on a country estate just north of Carnoustie.

Did you have any unusual jobs as a youngster?

I left school wanting to go to drama school, but I was too young, so for a year I worked at DC Thomson in Dundee as a sub-editor. I did many things such as answering the phone and going, ‘Hello, fiction’, which was my favourite thing to say. Then I wrote the horoscopes for the Dundee Evening Telegraph. I would say things like, ‘Jupiter is rising in the east, and therefore today is a good day for gardening’. I would always think it was for an old lady with cats – that was my target audience.

Then I was put on a magazine called Tops, where I had to interview pop stars. I was 17 and a half when I ‘retired’ from journalism and went to drama school. I can’t imagine what those pop stars must have thought. I look back at pictures now and I looked about 13. I was going to concerts and interviewing people and I was this pale little hairless thing. But it was a really good experience.

What do you like to do in your downtime?

I love pottering. I’ve just come back from Cape Cod — I was doing a concert and was, bizarrely, opening the Cape Cod Jazz & Arts Festival, even though I’m the least jazzy person – and I spent the day putting up one of those archway trellis things and screwed that all together, trained the trees up on my deck outside, brushed the back garden, and I cooked. I made some mince and tatties, and then we watched telly.

We watched a really great documentary that I’m in, called Chimp Crazy (they sent it to me because it’s about to come out on HPO) about the trade of primates and apes. I am in it because there was a chimp that I did a film with in 1996 and I loved him. Then years later, I was told he was in an awful place and they were trying to get him and all the chimps out of this place to go to a sanctuary in Florida. So, I started to be part of this campaign. So, this documentary series – it’s by the same guy who made the Tiger King – is about the chimp industry. You see the story of this chimp called Tonka, and I’m popping in and out of it. It’s pretty amazing. It has a happy ending.

Do you have any pet peeves?

I have many pet peeves. I hate when people say ‘you did brilliant’, and I just really want to go ‘-ly’. If someone says ‘you did amazing’, I just say ‘-ly’ under my breath.

I also hate when it says, ‘Build your own salad’. I think ‘No, you build my salad!’ Then they go, ‘Which protein?’ and ‘Oh, you can only have three of those,’ or ‘No, you can’t have that’. It’s infuriating to me. I don’t want to be stressed by a salad.

Another thing I don’t like is when you say ‘thank you’ and people say ‘mhmm’. Instead of saying, ‘You’re welcome’ or instead of saying nothing, they go ‘Mhmm’. And it feels like they’re a bit annoyed or they can’t be bothered. I just hate it. There are three rules when you work for me – you can’t say ‘Mhmm’ after I say ‘thank you’; you can’t crack your knuckles; and you can’t put your teeth on a spoon. These are just things that drive me up the wall.

Do you have a collection of any kind?

I have a collection of bad pictures of myself!

A lot of the time when you are in something and there is a picture of you on the wall, they give you it. Like the picture of me in The Traitors with the crown on — they gave that to me.

But what you do with them? So, in our place upstate in the Catskills, one of the rooms is just full of awful portraits of me that various people have done over the years. I have done it so that when you are sleeping, the wall behind the bed is filled with these portraits of me. It’s not something I choose to collect, but I just can’t burn them! Also it’s kind of funny. I’ve made it a feature now.

Do you believe in ghosts?

I believe in the idea of energy. When you walk into a room sometimes, you can feel the energy of the room. You can tell if something has happened, or if there’s sadness. I think that’s what ghosts are.

It’s funny, I have my house in the Highlands and we moved in fairly recently. I was there on my own for a week, just sorting stuff out, and this was in April so it was dark early. There is a long corridor with all these rooms off it, so there’s just these dark rooms. I got a little scared one night, and I just suddenly thought, ‘This is a really old house, people must have died here, there must be lots of ghosty energy’. So, I just had a word with the spirits out loud and said, ‘I come in peace. I am going to live here now, and I really love this house and I will try and make it a happy place.’

I’ve done that a few times actually. You know the Hotel du Vin in Edinburgh? It’s in the old ‘Bedlam’ building, which was the madhouse. And the courtyard was the exercise room of the madhouse. I went there years ago when it was made into a hotel. I went up to my room on the top floor. One room was really boiling and the next minute it was freezing. I looked over the ledge and I looked down into the exercise yard and for a second I saw the inmates there – it just flashed into my mind. I knew what the hotel had been so I was excited. And I just felt really weird energy in the room with the hot and the cold, so I just had a word and said, ‘I come in peace and I understand you maybe have some anger — I have had some mental health problems myself, I really feel you’, and after that it was okay. It’s a good thing to do in life — to address things that scare you.

‘Victor & Barry’s Kelvinside Compendium’, 404 Ink, RRP £12.99, is out now. Alan will be at Wigtown Book Festival (27 Sept-6 Oct).

Forbes Masson & Alan Cumming [Credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan]

Read more Culture stories here.

Subscribe to read the latest issue of Scottish Field.