Actor Richard E Grant on….

…on ditching the map

Grant says he travels for pleasure “all the time”; this summer alone, he visited Morocco, Kenya, Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, Germany and Austria. “I travel on my own and I love it,” he revealed. “I love walking and not following a map, just finding stuff I would never have discovered if I was following TripAdvisor or Instagram. I find that very exciting and liberating.”

…being a tourist while filming

Grant shared that he runs four miles every morning, and likes to walk wherever he can, “and that’s instantly a way of seeing stuff”. His tip for cities like Rome and Venice, often crammed with visitors: “Go out at night, between 8pm and 10pm, when people are eating in restaurants and everything is lit up, it’s a useful way of getting round being in the crowds in the middle of the day.”

…his top travel tip

He also disclosed he only travels with hand luggage, after a lost luggage incident in New York 30 years ago. “I swore after that never to check in luggage again. It’s so liberating,” he reveals. “You never get searched, you never have to wait at a carousel, nothing gets lost and you edit down exactly what you need.”

…on feeling unimportant

Africa will do that, he says. “I love going on safari. It gives you a sense of how unimportant you are and how tiny you are in the universe. The sky seems much bigger than it is here, with our cloud density.”

… his travel to-do list

South America is a blank space on his world map, yet to be coloured in. “I’ve never had a film or a TV series there,” he said. “The closest I’ve got is the Caribbean.”

… doing Celebrity Race Across the World

“If they rang you up [for a Latin America series], would you do it,” asked his interviewer, Sir Chris Bryant, MP. “Yes”, said Grant. Have you watched the programme, probed Bryant? “No!” said Grant. Upon learning more about the format, Grant appears to reconsider. “Oh that’s not tourism, that’s an assault course – I’d never do a 14-hour bus journey undrugged,” he joked.

…. a future The Celebrity Traitors contestant?

“I’m obsessed with The Traitors,” revealed Grant. “I’ve seen every incarnation of The Traitors globally and I’m riveted by it. I have to be at a film premiere tonight [for his new film Nuremburg] but I’d rather be watching The Celebrity Traitors final.” The beauty and the cruelty of The Traitors, he said, was that you cannot trust anybody because as soon as you take away the motive for murder, you literally have no idea what anybody is going to do. “I was fascinated that Sir Stephen Fry, with his extraordinary brain power and intelligence, was frustrated because he couldn’t work out who the traitors were.”

… or perhaps even I’m A Celebrity...

Filming in Israel 35 years ago, Richard was taken out for a meal by a group of local actors. “I knew I was being put to the test when they said we’ve ordered something very special for you.” A kebab arrived and it didn’t look good, he recalls. “I thought I’ve got to act my best performance now, and I said this is absolutely delicious – even when they revealed it was bull’s testicles.”

… what he’d rather eat

His rider is simple, he says. “I’m allergic to alcohol, and I don’t eat chocolate or dairy. I ask for Coca-Cola and salt and vinegar crisps.” And when he wants to indulge? Sticky Toffee Pudding, he says. “There’s a factory in England, that I love to visit.”

…his birthplace, Swaziland

Swaziland (now known as Eswatini) is where Richard was born and spent his childhood – one defined by no TV, the BBC World Service as his only link to the outside world, venomous snakes and monkeys at the bottom of the garden. He has a “great yearning to return” after living in England for 45 years to see it with fresh eyes “in a way that you don’t recognise when you grew up somewhere because it’s so familiar to you”.

…his most glamorous film set

In 1994, Richard filmed Pret-A-Porter, what he described as an ill-fated film about the fashion industry, in Paris. But there was an upside: “Filming in the Louvre and Versailles with supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss is about as a glamorous as it gets.”